


Heart of Darkness

by KatyTheInspiredWorkaholic



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence Starting in Season 06, Established Relationship, Graphic Animal Gore and Mauling, Graphic Language, Grimes-Dixon family unit, Hurt!Daryl, M/M, Post Current Season, Violence, clichés and tropes for days, fluff and stuff in between the gore, horror/suspense, shameless refrences to Joseph Conrad works, whole hell of a lot of hurt!Daryl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-05-17 12:22:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 53,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5869300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatyTheInspiredWorkaholic/pseuds/KatyTheInspiredWorkaholic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When out hunting Daryl comes across some tracks in the woods that don't belong there. Chaos ensues.</p>
<p>(The abandoned!zoo story no one asked for)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I have put far too much time into this story, and it was supposed to be something silly that would never see the light of day and ended up being a full length horror story. And I'm not sorry, I have loved writing it. I got the idea from an article that was "zombie apocalypse clichés to avoid" so obviously I had to try and picture it in TWD universe. Of course I laughed at first, before I embraced the insanity.
> 
> But anyway, challenge accepted I guess. Because I wrote it out and liked it, and now we have this weird, crazy story that I'm scared to put out because it's been my dirty little secret since around July. It's almost finished, pretty much completely written, so I will post chapters once a week. Every Tuesday :) yay for schedules! This has been a long time coming and I wanted to get it out before Season 6B starts up if I ever got it up at all, and that was a heavy debate of mine for a while. I started writing this way before Season 06 even started, so any vague mentions of Alexandria should just be taken with a grain of salt because I'm glossing over it. 
> 
> Beta'd by the ever wonderful The_Royal_Gourd, who is a saint and does miracles with my works. Thank you again for taking up a second story of mine.

\--

Daryl had been tracking the deer for miles. 

The scattered forests in the Midwest were dense, sturdy and thick from weathering four extreme seasons throughout the year. Blistering winters, scorching summers, with spring and autumn full of rain and thunderstorms with little bursts of floods and tornadoes across the plains. Hunting was different from Georgia, in that he didn’t have to track by just faint footpaths in broken leaves and dust on the ground. The dirt here was soft and moist, with it raining so often the past few weeks, so prints were easy to find and follow through the foliage of grass and tree leaves and roots breaking up from the ground. 

Deer were also _plenty_ in this part of the country, more than the redneck had ever seen. The expanses of grassy plains and forests were bursting with wildlife, and he couldn’t remember a time it had been so easy to feed the group.

The last time had probably been Alexandria.

They didn’t speak of Alexandria, or what happened there, Rick didn’t allow it. It had been almost two years since the small town fell, razed to the ground in a mess of gunfire and smoke, the tin walls falling like dominos and the streets flooded with screams and blood and the stench of putrid flesh. No, it was best not to think about it, they just kept pushing forward. Pushing _West_ , where the walkers thinned out bit by bit with each state they passed through, though the cities were fewer and far between as well. The open road was a good, calming change to the clutter of broken houses and crumbling civilization, rotting frames and shattered brick across un-kept streets. Now it was overgrown highways, open skies, and _fresh air_ for the first time since they left the Greene farm.

Rick did his best to keep what was left of their group together, tightly knit and as strong as steel, tough and road-worn and more like family than they had been in a long time. It reminded Daryl of the prison, probably the best months of his life if he was being truthful, the only time he had ever been honest to God _happy_. He had never really been that content before, so comfortable in his own skin, so to have that sense of familiarity returned to him strengthened any lingering doubts he'd had about his group and his leader. He had returned to Rick’s side shortly after the chaos had broken out, a vacant gap that the former sheriff hadn’t even known was there until Daryl had refilled it. Then it seemed it had been a gaping wound, festering and numb with infection until his friend had molded back into place as if he had never left. Rick never begrudged Daryl for standing up to him, for doing what was right, and was just glad that no matter what had happened in or around Alexandria Daryl had always managed to make it back. Now they had each other again, in ways different than they had been before, and they adapted to that as well. Shouldered everything together, with their family, as they always did – and pressed on. 

The group had almost passed through all of Missouri, lingering on the outskirts of Kansas City but keeping to the forests and suburbs instead of the small towns that circled the metropolis like spokes on a wagon wheel. The whole area covered a vast amount of miles, and it would take them a while to move through them, so they were restocking where they could, picking through areas to the South of downtown and the highways until they felt comfortable enough to keep moving. Convinced that eventually they would find somewhere to settle down again, rebuild. Daryl knew Rick was hoping that the mountains would give them refuge, another pipe dream that they were all willing to follow. Hope was all they had some days. That and the kids.

Carl was sixteen now, a man in every way as far as Daryl was concerned, and sharp as a fucking tack too. Kid was smart, far smarter than him, and observant as hell; knew how to reign in his Dad when Daryl couldn’t, and contributed more now that his sister didn’t need to be constantly held. Judi was three, Christ she was _three_ , the happiest and most spoiled little shit he had ever seen. But still a little asskicker, through and through. There was no doubt now that she was Rick’s child, the curls were a dead give-away; she had Lori’s big brown eyes and her dark chestnut hair color, but Rick’s _damn_ curls, falling in a tangled water-fall down her back. There always seemed to be twigs or leaves or flowers stuck in the unruly strands, Daryl would take credit for that – having her out in the woods since she could walk on her own – so everyone had gotten very well versed in the art of combing a toddler’s hair. She fussed and cried when anyone all but approached her with a comb, except her Daddy (Michonne had to show him a few tricks, though the little one would still cry those crocodile tears) or Daryl, where she sat without a fuss and kept her sniveling to a minimum. He never thought he would have had to learn how to braid a little girl’s hair, but stranger things had happened since the world ended. 

Like him and Rick, that was – different. 

They didn’t talk about it, didn’t really need to, and didn’t call each other anything or label whatever they… had. It felt more like shared parenting than anything, having slid into a role of helping with his kids and leading the group as easily as he had slid into the space at Rick’s side all those years ago. Although if Michonne made one more “First Lady” remark he was gonna throw something a _lot_ heavier than a glare at the stupid smirk on her stupid face. 

But he never thought he’d be in this situation, with anyone let alone someone like Rick, it had started to change and shift into something so much _more_ once they left D.C. and had started moving West. They hadn’t _done_ anything really, not enough time to; sleep or hunting or scouting or planning taking precedent over any ‘what-if’ situations. Privacy nearly non-existent and inexperience on both their parts stalling proceedings long enough to get interrupted by their family. But there was enough time to share looks, lean against each other, sit pressed side to side during meals. To steal kisses in the dark on watch and turn those shared looks heated on occasion across a crowded fireside. Enough time to accept this was _something_ without having a fucking crisis over it, and enough for Daryl to start sleeping in the same tent as Rick and his children. The toddler was another reason nothing had really happened yet. 

But Daryl was more than happy to wait, they could figure out what all _this_ meant when their family was safe again. 

Carefully picking through the trees and brush, picking up sounds of a creek not too far away, Daryl followed the deep-treaded hoof prints easily. He had noticed a few stumbles in the tracks, the deer picking up pace and running through the forest in a panic, making it abandon the small inlaid trail it had been following – which made the tracks so easy to spot he could’ve let _Rick_ track the damn thing – and start darting through the tall grass and bushes. Shifting the strap on his crossbow so it settled more comfortably across his back, Daryl picked up his pace too, still low to the ground but moving swiftly through the forest with as minimal sound as possible. 

The deer had skirted the creek, running along the bank for a place where it could cross. Though deep marks in the mud had shown it skid and kicked up the earth in fright, where it scrambled to keep moving. Something had been chasing it. He wasn’t too well-versed with what lived out here that could take down a deer, coyotes for sure but they weren’t big enough for the size of this deer, and they weren’t far North or West enough for it to be a mountain lion or a bear. And walkers didn’t move that fast. He sighed at the thought that maybe someone else had gotten to the deer before him, scared it into running and took it down across the creek. He’d find out if the trail went cold and he found boot prints in the mud alongside the deer’s path.

The tracks skimmed the bank, and darted towards the forest again, so Daryl kept following them, head down and focused solely on the tracks to see if he could tell how fast it was moving by how deep the hoof-prints were pressed into the mud, when he saw they went right into a tree.

Literally into the tree, branches broken and blood and some fur imbedded in the bark, causing him to blink in surprise and snap his gaze to the ground around him, trying to see if it kept moving. The body was nowhere to be found, but it had hit that tree _hard_ , and it was wounded. Maybe someone did shoot it. 

Just a few yards from the tree the tracks became a _mess_ , chaos in a theme of hoof-prints and torn-up dirt and mud with blood mixing into the damp earth and swirling in the small side pools of the creek. What the fuck had happened?

Approaching the mess of marks, Daryl lowered himself to the ground to get a better look at the scene, taking in the arches of similar marks and the long streaks that looked like the hooves had been dragged through the mud – indicating the deer had been off its feet. Somehow. 

The deer had been decent sized, from the tracks it left, which was why Daryl had been so intent on finding it. He hoped it would have enough meat on it to feed them for dinner and still have some left over to dry into jerky for when they started across Kansas. How had a man picked it up and moved it like that while it was alive? It was like the guy had wrestled with the damn thing.

It wasn’t until he had shifted a few more feet over, still tracking the scene with his eyes, that he noticed the second set of tracks. Now more than just a carved up mess in the dirt, they were well defined and pressed deeply into the mud from concentrated weight like his own shoe prints. He stared at them, trying to ignore the alarm bells going off in his head, and lowered his hand very slowly to trace over them and make sure they were real. Daryl could feel his heart beat steadily increasing in panic and starting to shake against his ribcage, making it more and more difficult to breathe. He recognized the damn print, as he lowered his own dirt stained fingers and splayed them out wide to measure with the width of his hand, not able to help the way his lungs tightened in his chest as he noticed the very tips of his fingers only barely passed the _edges_ of the print. 

The last time he had seen these prints they had been much smaller, no wider than two inches, littering the ground outside his and Merle’s double-wide trailer back in Georgia. And they had belonged to his neighbor’s _cat_. 

His body went incredibly still, and his mind whirled through the possibilities, but there was no fucking cat big enough native to North America that could have made these prints.

_Fuck me_ , if he could have dragged his hand down his face he would’ve, because of _fucking_ course. Keep it together Dixon, don’t let your guard down. 

Logically he knew the big cat had its deer so it was fed and wouldn’t want anything to do with him, but he couldn’t get his body to move for a minute. It wasn’t a fucking dinosaur, it would see him even if he wasn’t moving, but the instinctive part of his brain convinced him if he didn’t move he wouldn’t draw attention to himself until he had a plan. And right now he needed to radio Rick and get everyone the _fuck_ away from the area. They could scavenge in Kansas, because he was _not_ dealing with this.

Fuck he couldn’t even tell what it _was_ , just that it was _big_ , and feline, and had blood under its claws. 

Fuck.

He couldn’t believe his train of thought was even going there, beyond absurd and in the realm of fantasy as far as his experience had been the past few years. But he couldn’t help thinking – 

If it was a _lion_ , he’d probably see it through the trees, they didn’t match the foliage. That was best case scenario. But if it was a _tiger_ , the early fall colors would let it blend in perfectly, and he’d be _fucked._

Who was he kidding, he was already fucked. 

God _damnit._

Ignoring the small tremor to his hand, he reached back and snagged the radio hooked on his back pocket, cursing as it fumbled to turn on because he hadn’t been scared like this before. Never been afraid out in the woods, not since he was small and had gotten lost for nine days, but even then he hadn’t been scared of what was _in_ the forest. He had always known it inside and out, never had any reason to doubt what else was with him out in the woods, but he knew when he was out of his league. He’d make it out okay, he had to, even though the blood was fresh and whatever animal was out there was probably still in the vicinity. If anyone could survive this he could. And thank God it was him that found the tracks, Daryl didn’t want to think about if it had been Glenn or Carol or _Rick_ out here instead of him. So he tried to stay calm, and as rational as he could be, he still had his common sense after all. _Just don’t do anything stupid_ , and God that voice in his head sounded so much like Merle it pulled at his chest. But he couldn’t focus on that now. He was out in the woods, with no one around for a few miles, with some kind of fucking escaped zoo animal, and he was _not doing this today._

“Rick, come in,” Daryl commanded through the radio, breathing steadily through his nose to calm his nerves and cease the shaking. 

“Go for Rick,” the other man responded just moments later, they had learned to answer each other as quickly as possible out here.

He rolled his lips in a nervous tick, still not able to take his eyes off the giant paw print pressed into the ground, and not quite sure how to explain what he had found. Daryl’s gaze darted up to his surroundings every now and then just in case he saw movement – and he would honest to God loose his _shit_ if he saw movement – but he finally answered in his most serious, not-panicking-but-we’re-in-some-deep-shit tone.

“We’ve got a problem.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow I couldn't believe the response to this 0.0 I know it's a little out there, so thank you to everyone who read, left kudos and comments and subscribed! You all are awesome, and I'm glad you liked the story so far
> 
> Alright, quick disclaimers, places mentioned in this story ARE real places so all rights are reserved to those respective parties: for this chapter in particular the Kansas City Zoo, and the Starlight Theater amphitheater. 
> 
> Huge thanks to MaroonCamaro who beta'd this chapter for me! Thank you for being awake during my strange work hours and for answering my questions, your suggestions/advice were just what I needed :)
> 
> Any remaining mistakes are all mine, enjoy

-

Rick stared at Daryl with this unreadable expression. Bright blue eyes blank and carefully controlled, trying to reel in the confusion and this strange tick that came from the irrefutable _trust_ he had in the archer, but he just couldn’t bring himself to _believe_ him. 

“Are ya sure?” he asked after a minute, low and precise, quiet so only the two of them could hear the conversation.

“Didn’t see it m’self,” Daryl answered just as quiet, low rumbling Southern drawl kept just in the space between them. “But it’s paws’re the size of dinner plates, and it destroy’d that deer. We can’t stay here.”

Rick still looked hesitant, and Daryl didn’t blame him. They hadn’t encountered this once since the world had ended. They had lived through the Governor – twice, the cannibals from Terminus, and the Wolves outside of Alexandria, and in all of their experience _people_ were the worst thing they had encountered in the world. Between people and walkers and trying to find food to survive the last thing on their minds was what happened to any of the damn animals, especially the ones in the city zoos. If anyone had asked Daryl before today, he’d have assumed they all starved to death in their cages, or got torn apart by walkers, because he had never _seen_ anything out there in all his time in the woods. 

But the entire ride back to the amphitheater they had been holed up in the past couple days, all Daryl could think about was how he hadn’t seen a damn walker in miles. Nature’s entire way of life revolved around fighting back, turning corpses on the ground into compost in a matter of days, the world full of creatures that could not only defend themselves against something as slow moving as a walker – but also _lived_ off of rotting and decomposing flesh. The last remaining humans may have been a feast for the walking dead, but the walkers were a moving all-you-can-eat buffet for everything that lived in the forest. As far as he had seen, animals weren’t subjective to the virus, so any sort of bug or maggot or scavenger would be able to live off of one walker corpse for _weeks_ , happily.

And it must have been happening here, because the more he thought about it – Daryl realized it wasn’t just a stretch of miles that lacked walkers. He hadn’t seen a single one in almost three days. He wasn’t sure if that relieved him, or sacred him shitless. 

Rick had ducked his head in that way he did when he knew things weren’t going to go their way, subconsciously preparing for the brunt of weight, and shook his head a bit, “We can’t leave, too close to dark.” He knew Daryl was staring at him, but when he looked up he didn’t meet the hunter’s gaze, just surveyed the couple dozen people milling around the empty outdoor theater. There were too many of them, they had too much to carry that they couldn’t leave behind, and they’d never be able to pack everything up and locate a new place to hunker down for the night before it was too dark to find shelter. “We’ll just have ta double up on watch, move at first light.” When Rick finally did look at his friend, the other still had a look of apprehension thinly veiled behind his usually stoic gaze, and he knew he should heed Daryl’s worries more than he was if this was bothering the other to the point even Rick’s words of reason couldn’t soothe him. He grasped the archer’s shoulder in a solid and hopefully reassuring gesture, “We’re gonna be okay, we outnumber whatever is out there.” 

Daryl nodded, but not in the way that said he agreed, more to end the conversation – get Rick to stop talking because he had said his piece, even though he had barely said twelve words. Then Daryl was ducking out of Rick’s touch, gently squeezing Rick’s side in passing as he left the leader standing alone at the bottom of the stage area, and disappearing into the crowd of survivors. 

\--

“We’re leaving?” Carl asked, face scrunched up in confusion. “Why? This place is good, out of the way, even has a decent roof.” 

The Starlight Theatre amphitheater was large and gated, having some shops and roofed buildings at the entrance before sloping downward to the outdoor theater nestled into the side of the steep hill. It was still mostly intact, blanketed in bits of paper and branches, grass having started to break through the concrete and sprout in places making strange patterns across the cement. All the chairs in front of the towering stage were mostly in their places too, and the stage itself stood tall and broad, the square structure giving its current occupants good enough shelter without boxing them in. They had all taken residence in the stage, making a makeshift village under the dusty rafters. 

“Area’s dangerous,” Rick answered his son, maneuvering blankets and pillows around their current corner to make a comfortable place to sleep for Judi, who was yawning and starting to list to the side despite the fact she insisted she wasn’t tired. “So we’re moving first thang.”

“Daryl didn’t say why?” Carl prodded, pretending he wasn’t watching his Dad for any signs that he was hiding something from the rest of the group. He was notorious for that, after all.

“He did,” Rick scowled, answering slowly and not liking that his son tended to passive-aggressively remind him of his past faults. “We just don’t want ta start a panic. He found somethang in the woods, somethang that might put us in danger.”

“Well then shouldn’t we tell everyone so they know what to look for?” Carl reasoned, narrowing his eyes at his father.

“Trust me, if they see it, they will know.”

The teenager was silent for a moment, seeming to try and piece together the clues his Dad had let slip, and Rick knew if he let him think about it too long he might actually guess correctly. Rick could faintly remember as they drove through Eastern Missouri seeing peeling billboards advertising the Kansas City Zoo, because Carl had pointed it out at one point, and then they had to explain what a zoo was to Judi – who was _full_ of questions. She didn’t really know anything about any exotic animals, some of the creatures mentioned in passing in her nightly bedtime stories as fantastical as dragons or mermaids, and at the time they might as well been. She had just as much chance of seeing a unicorn as seeing an elephant now. 

When Judi asked if the animals were still there, if they could go see them, it was almost heartbreaking telling her no – that there was probably nothing left anymore. They had just assumed all the animals were dead.

Rick’s line of reasoning revolved around the fact that none of the animals were native to the area. The African plains animals couldn’t survive the winters here, and the colder climate animals couldn’t survive the summers. At least that was what he assumed, he didn’t actually know anything about zoology, maybe a lion or a giraffe could survive the winter, maybe penguins could live with blistering heat. He honestly hadn’t put much thought into it, never had a reason to. Now he wished those damn nature documentaries Lori loved to binge watch hadn’t put him right to sleep, maybe he would have a little more knowledge about their situation. All he could really remember were those “Untamed & Uncut” videos about zoo animals attacking guests and zookeepers when the opportunity struck, and that brought about the worry that Daryl had been trying to invest in him. 

But he doubted any animals would come here, if there were any, there were too many people around. Everyone who hunted knew animals, even predators, avoided civilization except to forage for food. Since it was autumn there was plenty of animals feasting on the plants that needed to be harvested, and those animals fed all the carnivores, so there was really nothing to worry about. Really.

“Get Judi ready for bed,” Rick instructed to keep his nosy teenage son out of his head and away from any guess work, “I’m gonna go find Daryl.”

“He’s on watch,” Carl answered, shifting to his feet and snagging his little sister around the waist to haul her over his shoulder, making the toddler burst into a fit of tired giggles. 

Rick blinked back at his son, confused, “I thought Tara and Maggie were on watch.”

“They are,” Carl said simply, nodding in the direction of the back of the theater. “Daryl’s on the other side with Abraham, said something about doublin’ up watch?” He added with a pointed look, once again emphasizing he was too smart and too old to be so easily misdirected. 

Rick sighed heavily through his nose, clenching his jaw and biting back the ‘of course’ that he wanted to grumble so badly, before squaring his shoulders and going in search of the archer.

\--

It didn’t take Rick long to find him. The amphitheater was a well sized space, though an enclosed one, so there weren’t many places that were good for look out. When he passed Abraham, the large man just nodded silently down the line of fencing towards where Daryl was perched high on one of the spotlight towers. The same couldn’t be said about his current company, the need to comment over-taking the silent seriousness Rick’s slight frown should have warranted.

“Your husband’s up on the watchtower,” Michonne smirked, leaning against the fence with her arms crossed and her teeth baring brightly in the late evening light. She had caught Rick and Daryl near a year ago making out like teenagers against a building wall while she was leaving her post for watch, and proceeded to never let either of them live it down. Though Daryl usually got the brunt of the teasing, seeing as it was easier to get a moment alone with the hunter than it was with the group’s leader. 

“Thanks,” Rick told them both with a hitch of a laugh, shattering the tension that had settled like an itch between his shoulder blades. He also didn’t bother to correct Michonne as he started toward the archer. He and Daryl weren’t a secret, there wasn’t room for such things with how close knit the group was while traveling, but they didn’t broadcast either. Just like the strange, amazing friendship that had formed between them years ago, they let the relationship that was always on the cusp of more stretch and grow like vine tendrils; blanketing everything but never interfering, entangling them together but somehow holding them stronger. Together they worked as a unit, always relying on one another, and together they led the group through many tragic times that could’ve ended so much worse were it not for Rick’s leadership and Daryl’s combination of knowledge and integrity. They were still testing the waters on what else could be found within whatever bond they held, but that exploration always seemed to be put off for a later time. 

Daryl didn’t acknowledge him when he walked up to the tower, but he never did – not when they were in the prison, or Alexandria, or any time on the road – not until Rick sat down beside him. So Rick climbed the built in rungs, the spotlight tower one of the flimsy-er looking structures around despite being made of slick black metal, meant to give it a more ‘modern’ appearance. Reaching the top, Rick was careful not to hit Daryl with the hatch door on the small platform, and climbed out to sit beside him, legs hanging off the structure and arms rested on the barred safety rail. 

“You gonna come down anytime soon?” Rick asked while surveying the surrounding dark, dense woods making visibility almost impossible among the trees, and only looking over at the archer when he shifted and pressed slightly closer. Shoulders brushing, hip bumping into his own, legs almost entangled as they hung from the spotlight tower. There wasn’t much room up there anyway, really only meant for one person, but if there was one thing the two men didn’t mind when they were alone – it was invasion of personal space. In fact Daryl outright searched for it, like now, when he didn’t have the words to form what he wanted to say, always just trusting Rick knew what he meant. And Rick did, Daryl wasn’t mad at him – anymore – but he was still wary about what might be out there in the dark. “Shift changed two hours ago.” 

Daryl grunted in response, dutifully not looking away from his post. 

“Don’ mind it,” he muttered when Rick didn’t continue.

“Not now, but you’ll have a helluva time climbing down when you’re more tired than you are now. Ya look dead on your feet.”

“Not tired.”

Rick couldn’t help the smile that broke out across his face, struggling to keep it secret and small and even ducking his head to do so – he didn’t want Daryl to get angry again, thinking he was laughing at him. His petulance was so like Judith it made Rick sometimes wonder who was rubbing off on who, their little girl usually seen following the hunter like a duckling around camp and recently starting to pick up his mannerisms. Rick couldn’t count how many times he had to tug her fingers out of her mouth, chastising that if she was so hungry she shouldn’t be eating her hands, only for her to turn around and do the same thing any time Daryl bit at his rough nails. Daryl’s face was priceless every time. 

“Still rather you didn’t fall and break somethang trying to get down later-“

“Ain’t made of fucking glass, _Grimes_ ,” Daryl was growling now, irritation flooding his face and body language swiftly and without pause, the aggression not even phasing the ex-deputy. By this point it was almost endearing, a flash of the hot-head that threw a string of squirrels at him back at the quarry outside Atlanta.

“Don’t I know it,” Rick murmured warmly, bumping Daryl’s shoulder and finally catching his friend’s gaze. Despite all Daryl’s protests, his eyes were bleary with black bruising smudged underneath, his irritation only a symptom of how exhausted he really was. “For me, then? Carl’s been driving me nuts, and Judi’ll sleep better with you there.” Daryl snorted, knowing Rick was just buttering him up now, flattery and appraisal going in one ear and out the other.

“Yer a shit liar,” Daryl conceded, but Rick knew he had won as the archer shifted away, both lightly embarrassed as he always was when dealt praise, and preparing to get his footing underneath him so he could stand up – but looking too tired to even attempt it. 

“So are you,” Rick answered, a laugh still contained in his chest. “C’mon,” and he got up, helping haul the other man to his feet. 

Down on the ground Glenn was waiting for them, and Daryl looked more awake now that he had to scale down the spotlight tower. He moved as if to pull Glenn aside, and Rick knew it was just to relay what to look for, and once again Rick was struck by just how _worried_ Daryl was about what might be out in the woods. 

“Nope,” he tugged gently on Daryl’s elbow, before clasping his shoulder and pulling him away from the fence line. “You’re comin’ to bed,” Rick told him before Daryl could attempt to protest. Glenn just shook his head at them, and quickly replaced Daryl’s earlier post by climbing swiftly up the spotlight tower. It said something about Daryl’s fatigue that he barely put up a fight. “Glenn’s got this, don’t worry.”

Once they got to the make-shift tent Rick had set up earlier, Daryl crawled under the awning of blankets that housed Judith to check on her like he usually did. Carl was beside her, curled on his side with his back facing the wall, passed out and snoring, and Judith was a sprawl of outstretched limbs and messy curls. Daryl had a moment to relax at the sight, before he ended up settling on Judi’s other side on his back, and fell asleep within seconds. That was how Rick found them, and he couldn’t help but smile at his family before he too settled on the ground, Daryl’s warmth pressed all along his side more comforting than any number of gates or guards ever could be. 

Any remaining thoughts of what giant animal lay within the scattered forests of Missouri were put out of his mind, confidence that the group would leave before anyone would ever witness it again easing Rick’s lingering doubts, and the promise that soon they could put this bizarre mess far behind them let him finally relax and sleep. They would be fine, just as he had told Daryl, and no one would be the wiser of what almost happened. 

Not four hours later they were woken in the night, and Rick was once again proven so very, very wrong.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to everyone, I'm glad you are all enjoying this story! This chapter is all action, it got a little away from me so it's a bit longer this time, and I kind of struggled with it, so big thanks to my beta The_Royal_Gourd for helping me get it in order. Any mistakes left are mine, enjoy :)

-

It was a few hours later, before morning had even had a chance to lighten the sky, that the resonating echo of barking filled the night air. The sound was warbled and foreign, unfamiliar to their ears, and Daryl sat straight up at the first loud echo, rousing Rick as well. 

They had fallen asleep still bundled up in jackets, belts, and boots – so they had shed some layers in their sleep to fight the heat in their tent, Daryl down to jeans and an open flannel, and Rick still wearing a T-shirt under his button down and socks. Rick became acutely aware of this as he sat up slowly, reaching for his gun belt and boots. The two men listened intently to the hollowing cries, and realized the barks were coming from all sides of the camp.

“Coyotes?” Rick whispered, though his words still woke Carl who startled at seeing them up and awake, and Daryl shook his head to his question. They sure as hell weren’t regular dogs, so the unsteady feeling that Daryl was right about the danger level in the area settled heavily in Rick’s stomach. He should really know better by now, Daryl was almost always right. “Ya sure?” he pressed. But all the archer did in response was shift to his feet, picking up his crossbow and using his lack of shoes to move forward slowly and silently.

Rick was much less graceful as he followed him, but he managed to motion at Carl to stay in the tent with Judi on his way out, the teenager nodding solemnly and reaching for his own pistol at his hip. 

They made it to the fence line without incident, the silent camp reverberating with the calls and cries all around them outside the gates. Meeting Glenn where he had come down off the spotlight tower and was using the rungs as a height advantage, looking out over the black metal gates. Daryl made a beeline for him, with Rick right on his heels, double checking the rounds in the Python. 

“Ya see ‘em?” Daryl asked quietly, peering out through the bars into the dense dark woods, Rick coming up on his other side to do the same. But as far as Rick could tell there was nothing there. 

Glenn jumped down to where they stood, pointing out into the dark. “I keep seeing movement, but I can’t tell how big it is – whatever it is.” Appearing and disappearing as quick as shadows, the three men saw something shaded dart through the trees, low to the ground but swift moving, and the shape looked _big_. It was too hunched for a dog, bulky in the front, long-limbed and took quick to make out any other features in the dark. Then another creature of the same build darted out, crossing the same path. “It’s pacing kind of weird.”

“There’s more than one,” Rick muttered lowly, and Daryl nodded sharply in agreement. The barks were echoing off the trees, making it impossible to determine just how many were out there, but the echoes were from in front of them and at all sides of the camp. Including behind them, and that cornered in feeling was not something Rick felt like repeating after Alexandria, the boxcar in Terminus, the Governor surrounding the gates outside the prison. 

“They’re not wolves,” Rick continued. “So whatever they are, they’re scavengers, we can just scare them off.” 

“We don’t know that,” Daryl muttered lowly.

“Guys,” Glenn interrupted. “What are we dealing with here?”

Rick breathed through his nose, trying to calm the churning emotions in his chest, threatening to build into something much angrier. Irritated from the situation, but also his own mistake. He finally pulled the younger man aside while Daryl kept his sharp eyes on the surrounding forest. “Daryl found some tracks in the woods, he thought they belonged to some big cat-“

“Like a mountain lion? Don’t they belong in – ya know, the mountains?”

“No mountains around here,” Rick agreed. “But there is a zoo, we think it might be from there.”

“Really?” Glen hissed in disbelief. “You can’t be serious.”

“I know how it sounds,” Rick amended. “I thought so too, at first, but Daryl knows what he saw and it’s our only theory right now.”

“So the dogs are – what, dingos? Wolves?” Glenn asked in increasing panic and disbelief.

“Ain’t wolves,” Daryl answered from behind them.

“We don’t know what they are, but we can’t take any chances,” Rick continued. “We need to find a way to scare them off.”

“What about walkers?” Glenn asked quietly, both he and Rick turning back to the fence-line. “Anything we do is going to draw them in for miles.”

“I ain’t seen a walker in days,” Daryl told him, words shattering something inside Rick as he tried to think about the last time he had seen a dead man stumbling through the forest. And he couldn’t, it had been at least a few days – maybe even a week. “Whatev’r is out there, it’s takin’ out the walkers too. Don’ need to worry about keepin’ quiet, there ain’t anythin’ for miles.” Rick nodded, a little numb at the prospect that – there was no walkers, something that had always been a constant in their life was suddenly not a variable that needed to be prioritized. He almost didn’t know what to do. Almost.

“So, noise and light should work, right?” he concluded, looking to Daryl for confirmation. “If we have enough of it?” 

Daryl nodded, still scanning the tree line. “Should do, but they’re gonna stop pacing soon, so we gotta do somethin’ fast.”

“Wish that spotlight worked,” Glen muttered. “It would scare them off easily.”

“We’ll just have to make do,” Rick answered, moving from the fence to survey the vehicles they had. “We can use the jeep, its headlights are brighter and there are lights up top as well,” he directed, pointing at the mud slicked vehicle. “And we can use the bike to make some noise.”

“That’ll wake up the whole camp,” Glen pointed out.

“Camp’s already awake,” Daryl said, following Rick towards the vehicles and the small scattering of people that had been woken by the pack circling the theater. Carol was the first to approach them, automatic rifle already over her shoulder.

“Do we know what it is?” she asked Rick, turning and walking with him and Daryl to keep the conversation between them.

“No,” Rick told her quietly. “But we need to scare them off before they start testing the fences.” 

A small flicker of emotion crossed her face, and Rick wanted to pinpoint it as alarm, maybe even trepidation, but it was gone as soon as he thought he glimpsed it, and the three continued through the sea of cars. “You have any ideas,” she inquired. 

“We’re going to try what we did at the warehouse last spring, but the opposite. We need to herd them towards the bottom of the hill, and make enough noise that they scatter into the forest.”

“Don’ know if that’ll last til morning,” Daryl muttered quietly to him.

“We have to try,” Rick said back, reaching the jeep and clapping the other man on the shoulder as he kept walking towards his bike. 

\--

Their core group, the people Rick had come to call family and would not only trust with his life – but the life of his children – had already gathered as they always did when situations arose like this. Rick saw them scatter to designated areas, the same routine as always, with Michonne and Tara coming up to circle him with Carol by the jeep. “It’s just animals,” he assured them, Michonne’s wary eyes and fingers dancing on the hilt of her katana giving away her reservations. “We’re going to do what we did in Tennessee, only backwards. Michonne and Tara go station with Glenn at the bottom of the hill, Carol take Maggie, Sasha, and whoever else you can grab and start a perimeter,” Rick instructed, climbing up into the jeep. “Face the vehicles outward, I’ll start at the top, then you guys follow my lead. And you see anything, shoot it, I don’t care what it is.”

“What do you mean – you don’t care what it is?” Tara inquired, suspicious and only a little frantic. “It’s just wild dogs or something, right?”

But Rick tuned out her questions, turning over the engine and reversing out of the ring of vehicles. The jeep was loud, which would help them, but not as loud as Daryl’s Frankenstein motorcycle – which sputtered and roared in guttural bases that filled the area, drowning out the sounds of the pack. And if anyone was still asleep in the camp, they sure weren’t anymore. They passed by each other, Rick motioning for Daryl to go back to where Glenn was posted by the spotlight tower, the archer nodding in turn and weaving through the mess of people and vehicles now filling the area. 

At the entrance Rick flipped on the brights, illuminating the empty parking lot and ticket area that had over-grown with vegetation over the years. But there were no signs of anything beyond the gates, just Abraham and Rosita standing armed and waiting for him, the ex-marine making way towards the jeep as soon as he parked it. 

“We got a plan?” he asked pointedly, looking far too awake for a man that should be on next to no sleep. He braced himself on the jeep door, practically leaning in Rick’s window to speak with him. 

“Yeah, scare ‘em off,” Rick answered. “Don’t want to risk being outnumbered by something we can barely see.” 

“Ya care to share with the class what you know that we don’t,” Abraham practically sneered in return, agitation bleeding through his military formalness in the face of imminent threat. “You and Dixon can’t keep all the secrets to yourselves, and he’s been spooked by something-“

“He found tracks in the woods,” Rick cut in, kicking open the jeep door and jarring the other man out of the way. 

“Of what, these things?” he hollered in a betrayed tone. “You both knew about this-“ Rick grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him away from the jeep, speaking much lower.

“No, something bigger, and something that does not belong here.”

“Well it ain’t bigfoot out there, so I’m running out of ideas.”

“You’ll catch on,” Rick told him. “Shoot anything that moves, meet back by the stage once they’re gone. We’re packing up and leaving at first light.”

“Motherdick.”

\--

The echos of the pack had died out, falling silent among the trees, and any faint yips of communication were drowned out by the commotion inside the amphitheater. Carol and Michonne had successfully armed anyone who was awake and sharp enough, and had others turning on the vehicles and pointing the headlights out toward the surrounding forest. As Rick made his way down past the stage and through the sea of empty seats, he made note of each post built up – lookouts standing on top of sturdy vehicles and other structures that could help them see over the black metal fences. Order that was well-maintained and well-practiced, they had their defensive strategies down to a science, and it reassured Rick more than he could ever tell any of them. They had learned from their past mistakes, and nothing was every taking what was his – theirs – ever again. 

The noise and lights had been turned on strategically, with Rick starting at the top of the hill and the other vehicles following – herding the pack toward the bottom. Rick didn’t know how well the fences had actually held up against the temperamental weather of the Midwest over the years. Hell he didn’t trust that there wasn’t one area they’d missed that was just a good solid push from crumbling due to rust, and then they’d have a hell of a problem. So moving the pack in one direction and then scaring them with the loudest sound they had – Daryl’s bike – would hopefully drive them away. It was a reverse of what they did to herd walkers, and Rick could only pray that his instincts were right in this situation too.

“Seems to be working,” Carol called, coming up to meet him in the middle of the audience seating. “Barking stopped a while ago, but I think they’re still pacing the fence-line at the bottom.”

“Guess it’s time to see how easily they scare,” Rick muttered lowly. “Hopefully it won’t take much, we can’t spare the ammo.”

Carol nodded, but still stared at him – in that way that was unnervingly knowing. 

“You’re going to be the third person that’s said something to me, and I don’t want to hear it,” Rick growled out, brushing past her and starting on his way back to the fence-line. The anger building hungrily in his chest had more to do with himself than anyone else, Rick was man enough to admit when he had been at fault – he should have said something when Daryl first told him about the tracks – but he didn’t need to be constantly reminded of it. Especially when he had no time to explain, safety of the group was first and foremost. 

He also had no idea what it was that was circling their camp, his basic primal drive to fight anything that threatened his own compelling all other instincts. He would kill for his family, his group, rip and tear and draw blood with his teeth if he had to – he had done so in the past – and until the over-bearing sensation of threat and vulnerability dissipated, he’d have his teeth bared and hackles raised. And everyone knew better than to ask him questions when the rage took over the man that was their leader.

The group that was at the fence-line, no more than six people all armed with rifles and shotguns, parted as he approached, coming up to Daryl who was leaning against his bike with his crossbow held in hand. The hunter looked up at his approach, following him with pale eyes that glowed in the surrounding headlights, “We’re ready,” he told Rick lowly, quietly despite the sound of the vehicles around them. Rick nodded, too tense to speak, and watched as Daryl slung his crossbow over his shoulder, and straddled his bike to kick start it. 

The deep base of the engine rumbled through Rick’s bones he stood so close, thundered like a shock wave that the pack out in the forest protested to, a chorus of high-pitched barking and yips that spoke of alarm. And apparently retreat, a few of the animals darted from the sides of the camp, scattered scouts that they had missed, and in the bright headlights everyone could catch faint shapes, bright patches of color that looked like spots, and the sinking feeling of the unknown held heavily in Rick’s chest. These animals were exotic, he could tell that much, which meant they were _also_ from the zoo. There was more than just the giant cat that had taken Daryl’s deer, there could be more out there than what they had encountered, and that possibility was enough to make Rick sick.

“It’s got something!” 

An animal darted through the high beams, quick but illuminated, bright as day. And Rick had seen it too, just barely in the blur of black and light brown fur, but he hadn’t been focused on what the animal was. He had been focused on the bloodstained cloth in its mouth, the bundle of white that looked far too much like the swaddled form of a baby. And he knew his heart stopped, lodged in his throat, blood turned to ice in fear. Only one woman had a baby that small, Natalie Sterling, but there was no way to know. There was no time. 

Before Rick could stop him Daryl was scaling the fence, dropping to the other side and running into the dark.

“DARYL!” he shouted after him, but to no avail – the hunter already disappeared among the illuminated trees. Rick automatically scrambled to also climb the smooth metal bars, Glenn and Michonne following his lead. Dropping to the grass, Rick had the python out and aimed at the ground as he ran after Daryl, trying to keep to the archer’s path. Echoed cries were bouncing off the trees once more, impossible to pinpoint, and when the cries turned to snarls Rick only ran faster. “DARYL!” he called again, trying in vain to see any forms in the dark, but the lights from the cars were gone just 15 yards into the woods. 

A gunshot crashed loud and thundering in the smothering darkness. The sound made him stop in his tracks, heart dropping to his stomach in fear, and making Glenn almost run right into him. Another gunshot had them tearing to the right, following the sound and the bright flash of light, calling for the hunter once more. The Korean man had had enough sense to grab a flashlight, turning it on now that they knew they were close. The jumping beam of light only showed shadowed trees, a labyrinth of brown and blue and black, and panic clawed at his burning lungs and chest at the echoing silence that followed the gunshots.

“DARYL!” Rick hollered again, desperation starting to crack through his calls.

“O’vr here!”

The beam of Glenn’s flashlight found the hunter silhouetted behind a grove of large trees, chest still heaving from running through the dark. In his hand he clutched the white wrap that Rick now recognized, the blood stains months old and not human, they had wrapped the dried deer jerky in the cloth and had been keeping it in a storage tent at the back of the stage area. That was far too close to where Judi and Carl were sleeping for comfort, and Rick’s adrenaline fueled heart just beat that much harder at the thought, so hard it hammered against his rib cage painfully. It had been so close. 

Snagging the flashlight from Glenn, Daryl showed the mess of tracks on the ground, distinct paw prints criss-crossing each other in a mess of organized chaos. “Gotta be a dozen or so,” he said lowly, quietly, but each of them heard him. The fear that they could have been outnumbered was newly arisen, there was no way of knowing how bad it could have gone if more than just the one had gotten past the fences. And then Daryl pointed the light at the dead animal on the ground, a limp pile of bloodied fur, still warm and smelling of buckshot. 

They were all silent at the sight, and Michonne was the first to say something. “Is that what I think it is?”

Rick didn’t have words, because the dead animal sure as hell wasn’t a coyote, and was no dog he had ever seen outside a National Geographic magazine.

It was the size of a large German Sheppard, with long lanky legs, and a shorter snout. Its ears were huge, circular like a mouse and almost as large as it’s skull, and the pattern of its wiry fur was stark patches of pitch black, bright white, and different tones of light brown. Mud was slicked up to its gangly elbows and attached to its fur, spattered along its coat, and in its side was the massive gunshot wound that matched the one in its head. How Daryl had shot it in the pitch black of the dark forest, Rick couldn’t even guess. 

“Do you know what it is?” Rick asked carefully, but before Michonne could answer the sound of hurried footsteps and the dancing light of multiple flashlights came into view.

“Are you all crazy!?” Tara yelled as she came into sight, a few useful Alexandrians in tow and also armed with guns and flashlights. “We just got rid of these stupid dogs and you go running into the woods like _morons_ and – Oh my God, what is that!” Now there were multiple people standing around the fallen animal, and with more lights on it, Rick saw Tara’s eyes go wide in surprise as well. “Holy crap – is that?” She looked at Rick, questioning and in actual disbelief, and Rick hadn’t seen that look on her face in a long time. “That’s a Painted dog, that’s an African Painted dog! Those were my absolute _favorite_ animals when we went to the zoo.” Her mouth open in shock, she only paused a beat before her flashlight turned to Daryl’s face. “And you _shot_ it!”

“What is an _African_ Painted dog doing in Missouri,” Michonne asked, pointedly looking at Rick, who always felt like a scolded child under her accusing gaze. And he might as well have been, squaring his jaw and not looking at her.

“Well it’s gotta be from the zoo, right?” Tara barreled on, catching everyone’s shocked gaze. “There were billboards everywhere on the highway, I can’t believe they’re still alive.”

“Not to mention whatever else is out there,” Glenn mumbled, still not able to look away from the dead animal. 

“What?” The careful calm that Michonne had been holding on to cracked in that one word, a level stare in Rick’s direction once more.

Godamnit Glenn, Rick cursed to himself, heaving a sigh that matched the one Daryl huffed out. 

“Well,” Glenn looked from Rick and Daryl’s faces, knowing he had just put his foot in his mouth from the glare Rick sent him. “Daryl found some tracks in the woods, they – weren’t sure what it was.”

“It was a cat, a big cat,” Rick answered truthfully. “That’s why I said we were leaving in the morning, we don’t know what’s still alive around here.”

“It’s kind of hard to mistake a _tiger_ footprint, Rick,” Michonne hissed, rage carefully controlled but obviously there. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“Didn’t want to start a panic, it was miles from here, we thought it was safe for the night,” Rick tried to assure her, but Daryl’s gaze snapped up to him his at his words. “Fine, _I_ thought we were safe for the night. I was wrong.” He ran his hand through his curls roughly, letting the words settle in, and catching Daryl’s gaze once more. “I was wrong, and we’re leaving at first light.”

Agreement rumbled through the group, all still staring at the fallen animal. “What do we do with it?” Tara asked carefully.

“Leave it,” Rick answered. “We need to head back. Anyone that is awake can start packing, as soon as the sun’s up – we move out.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's so sweet some of you thought they'd get out okay the next morning XD and a lot of people guessed hyenas for the pack, which was a good guess! I will have hyenas later, they are actually a little central to the story, but there will be many animal appearances all throughout. I'm glad you all are still having fun with the story! I'm sorry I haven't replied to comments yet, I was working on my other fic and got super distracted the past week. Speaking of, this chapter is un-beta'd because my lovely beta is working on the next chapter of Southern Discomfort C: so any mistakes and awkwardness are mine. Enjoy

\--

“What do you mean it won’t start?”

At the very center of the lot was an old school bus, exterior panels warped and burn-slicked like war paint, that the group had outfitted with wire mesh along all the windows and tires stolen from a fire truck somewhere in Kentucky. They had been easily moving their large group from state to state with the help of the seasoned vehicle, carting around the families left over from Alexandria and others they had picked up along the way. It had been commandeered early on after the town fell, becoming a central part of their camp since it was so easy to spot from a distance – but was covered in enough dirt and grime and had enough damage to the exterior to still blend in to the dead landscape. It also housed a lot of their supplies while they were traveling, making it reliable and essential to their cross country excursion. But the machine wouldn’t even sputter a cough as Maggie repeatedly turned the key. Glenn had been elbows deep in the engine for over an hour, and despite many coming over to offer assistance nobody could get it to start.

“Transmission is shot,” Daryl grumbled, trying to rub grease off his fingers with his usual red shop rag. “Ain’t nuthin’ ‘round here gonna fit to fix it, neither.”

“We could try and find a school?” said a woman named Clara, who had joined them in leaning over the engine to inspect the road wary vehicle. “Every one of these suburban towns has a handful. It’s cheap to build them out here.”

“It’s a good place to start,” Rick agreed. “Let’s try and scout the area, but I want everyone in groups of three – at least,” he dictated, Clara nodding and eagerly going off to start rounding up teams. “And a good number of people here at camp, too,” Rick added to Glenn before he could follow her. “We don’t know what’s out there, some things could be worse than walkers.”

“Walkers are easy,” Daryl muttered low as the others walked away. “What’s out there now _hunts_ , and we’re a lot tastier than them dead SOB’s.”

“We’re not making the same mistakes twice,” Rick assured him, catching his gaze and holding it, still apologetic about the night before. Everyone was tired, on edge that was only eased with the knowledge that they _were_ leaving before the day was out, but it was hard to keep that mindset when everything seemed to be going wrong. “ _I’m_ not making the same mistake twice.” Daryl watched him in that way like he wanted to believe him, before huffing softly and started poking through the engine once more. 

“Ya better go say somethin’, then,” Daryl told him after a minute, always careful to gather his thoughts, and Rick knew he was right. Whoever didn’t see what ran into the woods the night before, or hadn’t been told through the rapidly growing grapevine that traveled throughout the camp, was going to need to know their situation before Rick sent them out in groups. 

So he nodded once, sharp and resolute, resting his hand on Daryl’s shoulder for far longer than just a casual clap as he departed. It took more effort than he would care to admit to leave the comforting presence of the other man, but he had to answer to his faults the previous night – and urge the group to use caution when outside the gates, before something worse happened.

\--

Rick gathered everyone near the trucks where some were packing up and piling in, calling them over until he had the various different posses’ undivided attention. This was what he was good at, as begrudging as he felt before he had to stand up in front of everyone with eyes both accusing and obedient, judgmental and trusting in a juxtaposition that always put Rick’s teeth on edge. But he had led them through some tough spots, hopeless scenarios, ones that shouldn’t have had a small light at the end of the tunnel – but somehow Rick could always see it, because he trusted this group. Every single person had proven time and time again that they were capable, would fight tooth and nail to defend what was theirs, and could work together to conquer the odds that always seemed to be stacked against them. And in turn they trusted him, trusted his instincts, and his ability to put their strengths to good use in strategic ways. It was this combined strength that had helped them survive this long. 

“Okay listen up,” he called, talking loud over the scattered chatter. “We _are_ leaving before sundown, so we need to either find parts for the bus – or gather more vehicles. Without the bus we need at least six or seven that are decent sized, and we would have to leave most of our supplies behind. Right now we don’t have the time, or the fuel for option B, so we need to focus on fixing the bus. Or replacing it.” 

Everyone agreed in a chorus of nods or vocal affirmations, but they still all watched Rick expectantly. He wouldn’t have called them together for something so trivial, and he owed them an explanation. Rick’s hands rested on his hips, hooked on his gun belt and the Colt Python’s holster in a gesture that always helped settle his nerves, and he ducked his head to gather his thoughts before speaking. 

“You all know what happened last night,” he began slowly, trying to catch the eyes of every person in turn. “We had a pack of wild animals circling us, and we don’t know why they targeted the camp – it could’ve been for our food, or a territorial thang, but either way it’s not safe here.” He paused for a moment, cutting a glance at his friend and partner, always standing off to the side – but always having his back. Daryl’s steady pale blue gaze providing a strength Rick could never put into words. “Daryl – found some tracks in the woods yesterday, miles from here, of something larger than the wild dogs from last night. We weren’t sure what it was at first, but… we are by the Kansas City Zoo, and we think that some of the animals might still be alive.” Disbelief rippled through the crowd, as fast and effective as a stone thrown in a pond, and Rick barreled on. “I know how it sounds, but after last night we can’t take any chances for what might be out there.”

“What do you think is out there?” Aaron asked, eyes darting observantly between Rick and Daryl, he was one of the few outside the original group that knew when Daryl was rattled. And though the hunter tried to hide it, the firm set to his jaw and tenseness in his shoulders read red alert to everyone who knew him well enough.

“We don’t know,” Rick only partially lied, keeping his gaze steady to hide that fact. “But we’re going to be careful just in case, and we need to leave the area soon rather than risk our luck.” He looked around, unblinking blue eyes tracing over every face in front of him for more doubts or questions, and when he saw everyone looked either resigned or prepared to move he continued. “You all know where you’re supposed to be, so get moving – and be back by sundown, or you’ll have to find us on your own.”  
It was an empty threat, they all knew, but the wrath of Rick Grimes tracking you down because you didn’t show up by sundown was a much scarier fate than being left behind. 

The groups scattered, car engines turning over and pulling out of the lot to scavenge the surrounding areas, talking commencing and weapons being loaded and checked, a comforting symphony to Rick’s ears. He turned to go and find Daryl among the crowd, talk about what they were going to do – maybe leave Carol in charge and go scout themselves, since Daryl knew that they needed to fix the bus – but was stopped by Clara once more. “Rick,” she said defiantly, anger in her eyes anything but concealed thought it seemed she tried to do so. “Michonne said I’m staying here and watching the kids? I always go with Justin! Why can’t Margaret or Maggie do it? Or Natalie, since she has a baby already?”

“Natalie has her hands full,” Rick told her, knowing all too well the amount focus it took to take care of an infant. “And Margaret is watching them, with you, we need to keep them in one place and ready to move – we don’t know when we’re going to get to leave, so we need to keep this organized. Margaret get’s distracted easily, and there’s six kids to watch –“

“So I’m babysitting the babysitter?”

“You’re keeping track of the one precious thing we have in this camp,” Rick said sternly, the words growled so low the other woman fell silent. “My daughter among them, I need to know she’s in good hands and won’t get left behind – do you understand?” Clara’s mouth had snapped shut at Rick’s demanding tone, only nodding sullenly when he asked for her clarity on the subject. Then she turned on her heel and walked back towards the stage area, brushing past Carol a little too harshly and disappearing among the crowd of people. 

“Trouble in paradise?” Carol asked with a raised eyebrow.

“She just doesn’t want to leave Justin alone out there,” Rick said with a heavy sigh, still watching the woman and making sure she was going towards where they kids were being gathered and not her husband’s jeep. “He’s with Tara and Kaleb I think, so he’s in good hands – she’ll get over it.”

Carol hummed noncommittally, also surveying the crowd and adjusting the strap on her automatic rifle across her back. “You need me to stay behind too? Keep an eye on her?”

“Nah, she’s fine. But either you or Michonne need to stay with the camp, I think Daryl and I are going to join in the search, probably take the bike out.” Carol nodded, sending a smile Daryl’s way as the hunter sidled up to Rick with his crossbow already over his shoulder. 

“I’ll go find her,” Carol agreed, then added, “You two be careful out there.” With a parting kiss to the archer’s cheek she also made her way through the slowly thinning crowd, leaving the two men alone by the entrance building. Prying eyes too busy to notice them.

“You ready?” Rick asked Daryl, nodding to his gear already on him.

“As I’ll ever be,” Daryl answered quietly, biting at his thumb nail nervously. “It’s kinda messed up. Didn’t think we’d find the African Savannah in the middle o’ nowhere.”

“Yeah, well – stranger things…” Rick said with a small smile, but averting his eyes. And Daryl knew what he meant, huffing and bumping his shoulder with Rick’s. 

“Didn’t think we’d find something worse than people out here,” Daryl muttered, also not looking at the other.

“Or walkers,” Rick added cheekily. “Lesser of two evils.”

“Three now, we’ll be outnumbered soon.”

“Hey,” Rick caught him before he could wander too far, pulling him in close to inspect the seriousness in his eyes. Daryl was still worried, still wary of what lay in the forests beyond the gates, and Rick knew better now – knew to hinder his uneasiness and address it. He leaded his forehead against Daryl’s, in his usual gesture of closeness that always grounded them both, and it made the two close their eyes for a minute. “We’re gonna be alright, all of us. We always make it, _surviving_ – it’s what we’re good at.” Daryl nodded against him, Rick’s hands coming up the sides of his face to hold on to him. He felt Daryl swallow hard at the gesture – though if it was from nervousness or from anticipation he couldn’t tell. But it felt so good to have Daryl pressed so close, warm and solid, comforting in a way only the stoic man’s grounding strength ever could be. They fed off each other’s presence, calming the storm of apprehension and fear and danger that constantly whirled around them, so for one small moment it was just _them_. And nothing could touch them.

And Rick was kissing him before he could stop himself, closing the small distance between them to press his lips to Daryl’s, soft and so much like coming home his heart hurt at the gesture, conveying everything he wasn’t able to bring himself to say. That he loved him, that there was no one that could ever be by his side and make him feel the way he does, invincible and strong and able to conquer whatever crossed their path. Daryl kissed him back, with no hesitation, even chased after him when Rick pulled away, making Rick smile softly. Drinking in the bewildered look on his friend’s face, as if he had just caught himself and couldn’t believe he’d been so spellbound by the other man. Daryl and he weren’t intimate often, never had a chance to be alone – even like this, for just a moment – so the other’s eagerness and confusion that followed was always a treasure to witness. Daryl still didn’t fully understand how wrapped around each other they were, how much love could drive a person to forget their actions, where they were in the moment and what should be important. The hunter had even once told him, under the secrecy of night, that he wasn’t used to being loved – had never really been on the receiving end of the sentiment, and now that he knew he was, he didn’t know what to do with himself. All the while apologizing for being shit at it, which only made Rick kiss him harder. 

He had to fight the urge to do so in that moment, as well, especially now that Daryl remembered they were supposed to be going on a run. That they had a timeline. Rick watched as Daryl huffed that sound that might have been a scoff or it might have been a laugh, averting his pale eyes and surveying the area to see if they’d been spotted. Rick was too busy still watching the archer’s face, tracing each contour and line, and it took a lot of effort to tear his gaze away to see what the newly formed scowl on Daryl’s face was directed at.

It was Michonne, of course, standing across the lot with a shit-eating grin directed their way. Carol right beside her sporting a similar expression. 

“Don’ch’all have somethin’ to do!” Daryl snapped loudly, the two woman bursting into a fit of giggles at his outburst. “Fuckin’ vultures,” he grumbled lowly, stomping off towards his bike in a huff that had Rick shaking his head and following him. Though the bright smile dropped off his face as he spotted someone else across the lot, Tara with a look of absolute panic in her eyes tearing across the amphitheater like a bat out of hell. 

Aiming straight for them.

Shit.

“That can’t be good,” Daryl said under his breath, and Rick was inclined to agree. 

Though he couldn’t imagine what else could possibly gone wrong for them.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay everyone, I've been fighting my internet the past couple of hours. But here it is! Now I gotta see if I can get the newest episode up and running over here :) No beta, I was working on this until the last second, some bits are still a little off. All awkwardness and typos are mine! Enjoy!

\--

“Tara just breathe,” Rick said as calmly as he could, hand hovering over the young woman’s back as she heaved for air with her hands on her knees, trying to gasp out words that just couldn’t be heard. “You need to breathe ta speak, what’s wrong?” There was a wide panicked look in Tara’s eyes, that could have been something good that she was afraid to say too late, or something really bad, and Rick was leaning more and more towards the later. Daryl shuffled from foot to foot tensely behind Rick, watching them warily.

“C-Clara – and Justin,” Tara heaved, finally able to get some form of verbal communication out of her burning lungs and throat. “Said – the zoo would have – the parts for the bus!” she managed to gasp out, and a bit of her panic hit a chord inside Rick as well, bleeding over from the anxious energy she emitted like radiation. 

“What?” he asked tersely. 

“Service vehicles, at the zoo – they match what we need to fix the bus!” 

“No, absolutely not,” Rick almost barked in agitation, shaking his head resolutely with a frown on his face. “We don’t know what’s out there, Tara!” But Tara’s hands had found his wrists as to get his attention, also shaking her head rapidly over his shouts which were steadily increasing in volume. 

“No! I’m not saying we should go – I’m saying they already left!” she told him with such a fierce look of panic in her eyes that Rick’s heart stopped cold.

Clara was supposed to be watching the kids.

“Where’s Judith,” Rick asked, with little emotion in the words to carefully mask the fear and rage that was threatening to explode inside him. Held so tense, hands fisted tight and wracking the muscles in his arms in tiny tremors that spoke of the devastation Rick Grimes was about to unleash on Hell and Earth. 

“She was supposed to be with the others, but I don’t think she is,” Tara barreled through her words quickly, having caught her breath and trying to get out what she needed to say. “Clara and Justin took the van, the one the kids were being loaded into. They said it could hold the parts. But I can’t find the kids anywhere, or Margaret – I think they went with them-“

Daryl’s motorcycle roared to life behind them, tires shrieking in protest as he peeled out of the parking lot, black marks in an arch he drove the vehicle so hard, tearing up towards the entrance and out of the gates. Rick had a hold of Tara’s arms, keeping her attention trained on his intense blue eyes and not on the redneck driving off after the van that they had just seen not ten minutes before. “Which direction did they go!” 

“I don’t know! The zoo is East, so probably right,” Tara almost shouted, trying to lean away from Rick’s angered gaze. 

“Tell Daryl that,” Rick told her, letting her go and pointing to the radio on her hip before running as fast as he could toward the stage area. Screaming Judi’s name, his son’s, onlookers only staring at him dumbly as he ripped through camp like a tornado. Anyone unlucky enough to cross his path left a scared and shaking mess after he shouted questions at them, not getting the answers that he wanted. 

“JUDI!” He tore across the stage area, skidding to a stop when he saw Natalie Sterling sitting on the edge with her baby boy held tightly in her arms. “Natalie! Have you seen the kids! My daughter!”

Natalie shook her head, fear and a worry that only another parent could feel kindled in her bright green eyes. “No, I haven’t. I thought she was with Margaret?” But Rick was already moving away; eyes wild and manic, fear gripping him like a vice, and checking everything within sight from the top of the stage. There weren’t any cars left to hide behind, the camp was all but packed up, there was just the old school bus sitting like a relic among the rest of the tattered theater. And Rick’s heart was a cold lump in his throat, his insides burned and shredded as everything that surrounded him, and he could feel the heat and pinprick of tears threatening to fill his eyes and choke up his airways.

“ _JUDI!_ ”

He had screamed himself hoarse, ripped apart what had been left of the camp, before the faint crackle of one of the walkies in the bus reached his ears. Just in time to see Michonne running towards him, Carol’s voice over the walkie calling his name.

“Rick! Judith and Carl are at the entrance,” Caro’ls voice hailed him, and Michonne was in his face a moment later, a blur as the panicked exhaustion took over.

“They were riding with me Rick!” Michonne told him, tugging on his shoulders to get him moving again, before the two sprinted to the entrance buildings. Carl was there standing next to Carol, Judith on his back with her arms around his neck, the teenager watching him with more apprehension than Rick ever wanted him to again. Rick hadn’t returned to the crazed, mad man from the prison or the streets of Alexandria in a _long_ time. Mostly thanks to Daryl, but at the prospect of his baby girl anywhere near that place – that held dangers far beyond his imagination – he had lost every last shred of resolve he could hope to grasp. It scared the absolute shit out of him. 

Judi, the good girl that she was, slid off her older brother’s back and came up to meet Rick, who hadn’t stopped flat out running until he could scoop her up in his arms and hold her tight to his heaving chest. Wracked with dry sobs at what could have been, what terror and horror was almost bestowed on all of them. 

Too much had already happened.

It was like one by one they were each losing their sense of mind.

They needed to get away from that place, before the fear-induced madness affected them all.

\--

Daryl was driving too fast. 

The streets whipped by in a flurry of trees and run-down houses, cutting through the backroads that would lead to the highway – once he got there he’d be able to run down the van. The ugly maroon mini-van that miraculously had seat belts in every seat, perfectly fit for car seats for the various young ones; Daryl knew it like the back of his hand because he was typically the one riding alongside it when the caravan was traveling. It was a fucking eye sore in the vast wilderness of decaying buildings and plundered remains of vehicles, and not nearly as inconspicuous as the old school bus, but it was essential to keeping the kids safe while driving from town to town on the abandoned highways of the US. 

Daryl had almost made it to the onramps when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. 

What at first appeared as survivors trying to flag him down, his roaring bike an easy beacon for those who were trying to find fellow living humans (to which he did NOT have time for today, his little girl was fucking missing!), was actually something far more familiar. He knew that stupid blue jacket anywhere, with the faded plaid on the reverse side that was apparently “in-style” at one point or another. Not that Daryl knew anything about that kind of shit. But when he and Aaron had spent hours upon hours trekking through the woods and suburbs of Virginia he had heard more than one defensive argument about it. As if Daryl gave two shits about it being _plaid_ , it was just too bright to not be spotted from five fucking miles away. 

He swerved to avoid an oncoming collision that lay spread across the road like a memorial to the tragedies of the first days of the outbreak, and circled around to come up to Aaron’s jeep. He had two people with him, Luke and Adrian, and the trio looked like they’d been scavenging the remains of an old auto-body shop. But by the worried look in Aaron’s eyes everyone who was on the radio channel had heard Tara tell Daryl which direction to drive in no manner of calm words. 

“What’s happening?” Aaron asked when Daryl skidded to a stop beside them, not even turning off the engine or climbing off his bike, he planned on staying in that spot no longer than the next 20 seconds because he _didn’t have time for this._

“Did ya see the van!?” Daryl shouted back to him, matching the other’s volume over the loud sputter and grumbling bass of his bike. “The kids are missing!”

If his eyes could get any wider they’d pop out of his head. A knowing fear striking them and bring him back to center, he and Daryl knew how to work with each other in a crisis. “Judith with them? It got on the highway not ten minutes ago. We’ll follow!” he barely had a chance to shout the last two words at Daryl before he was driving off toward the on-ramp once more. The jeep appeared in his rear view mirrors barely a few minute later, speeding down the highway as fast as the odometers would let them. 

Daryl almost didn’t hear the crackle of the radio over the wind. 

It took far too long to stop, slowing down from booking it at almost triple digits, but he eventually got to a stop in the middle of the abandoned highway. 

“Did’ja find her?” he said into the speaker, heart still in a vice grip, and beating so hard against the tension that it physically pained him.

 _“She’s here, she was with Carl and ‘Chonne,”_ Rick answered, the relieved tones letting Daryl breathe freely for a moment, the panic that he didn’t allow himself to feel when he sprung into action finally attacking his chest with a vengeance. 

“What about the others? They there too?” he asked after a minute, debating on asking if he can talk to her. Just to be sure. Needing to hear that little girl ask why he drove away so fast, or that he forgot his helmet again, _something_ to make his heart stop hurting. 

_“No, we can’t find them.”_

Daryl leaned heavily over his bike handles, dread and something horribly responsible settling heavily on his shoulders. He hadn’t wanted today to go like this. They were supposed to be half-way to Colorado by now, safe on the open road, or weaving through the backroads with Rick plastered to his back. And now he was trying to not be scared, trying to breathe correctly, knowing what he needed to do, and without seeing if his little girl was okay first. Because he was already over half-way there, and there was nothing in the world that could’ve convinced him that turning around and driving home was an option. 

“Where are they?” Aaron asked behind him, having gotten out of his car to come up to Daryl to make a plan, walkie still pressed to his ear to hear over the bike. 

But Daryl turned it off, because he wasn’t leaving for a while, and Rick needed to be able to hear him say this.

“Clara and Justin wen’ to look for parts for the bus, at the zoo,” Daryl answered gruff and distant. “An’ she was suppos’d ta be watching the kids.”

“You don’t think she’d take them with her?” Aaron almost scoffed, disbelief as strong in his eyes as when Rick had mentioned earlier that the animals from the zoo might still be alive. “She knows better than that.”

“So we thought,” Daryl answered angrily, hissing through clenched teeth. Knowing if Clara _was_ that stupid, she was about to have hell from a Dixon to pay, and that was a type of anger he hadn’t unleashed since Atlanta. “But we gotta go check, and stop them from gettin’ to that zoo. Gonna get themselves killed.”

 _“Like HELL you are!”_ Rick shouted at him from the radio, so loud in the dense quiet of the open highway Daryl winced. Before jerking around to glare at Aaron, who had his finger on the button so the conversation could be heard on the frequency. To his credit, Aaron let go of the mike button when Daryl leveled the most angriest of stares he’d ever been on the receiving end of, but that didn’t undo the damage that was done. Daryl snatched his own radio back up and held it there for a moment – knowing the argument they were about to have was not going to be pleasant. But it sure as hell was going to be public.

“The hell I ain’t,” Daryl snapped back strongly. “They don’ even have a radio, ‘r else they’d be answering us by now! I’m gonna go get ‘em, and we’ll be back before we need’ta leave.”

_“So help me GOD Daryl, you turn around and come back here-“_

“The _fuck_ did you just say to me?!” It was hard to tell if they were talking over each other, both cutting the other off by taking over the radio waves. “Ain’t a damn thing you can do to stop me, I’ll be right fuckin’ back!”

_“Yeah, in pieces! We don’t know a damn thing what’s in that place! And with no back-up - Over my DEAD BODY you’re going in there alone Daryl!”_

“He’s not alone,” Aaron spoke up, visibly uncomfortable with the domestic spat being broadcast to God and everyone, but calmly interrupting all the same. “Luke, Adrian and I are going with him.”

Daryl sent him a warning look just as Rick snapped _“Not helping, Aaron!”_ from the other end of the frequency, so in sync he as a little astounded – merely raising his hands in defeat and physically backing away from the man on the bike.

_“Daryl don’t you do this, come back – we can make a plan here-“_

“The longer I wait the clos’r they are ta that place, I can catch them just let me try,” Daryl snapped back, trying to reel in his anger, knowing Rick’s enraged voice was from a metric fuck ton of fear and worry. And not that he didn’t trust him, despite how his angry arguments made it sound. Fucking jackass. 

There was silence that followed, tense and drawn out, seconds ticking by so rapidly and painfully it felt like someone was peeling the skin from his body. Once again hit with the reminder that they didn’t have time for this, if he waited too long then the group in the van would reach the zoo before Daryl could get in front of them. He didn’t want to imagine what he would find then.

 _“You come back – in one piece, you hear me?”_ Rick told him, voice thick with an emotion Daryl didn’t want to name. Rick Grimes didn’t crumble under any form of pressure, unless it came to his children – or his family. But he usually just fought harder when that happened, and could be the most stubborn son’uvabitch Daryl had ever met – only ever matched by that of his older brother. Daryl loved him for that. But Daryl was more than just family, no matter how much he had to remind himself of that. So he could only nod in response to Rick’s tense request, in that way that usually conveyed more than words ever could. 

But Rick couldn’t see him, he was miles behind him, about to be more – with a jungle of terror and dangers that were far bigger than Daryl ever thought he could handle. He had to, in that moment, be ready for them, no matter how much the thought of what was about to come scared him to death. And he wasn’t scared easy, but no one looked into a lion’s den without a touch of fear. 

And he hoped with every ounce of his being that he wasn’t about to _literally_ do that. 

Rick didn’t need to know that, though. So he swallowed hard, clearing the choked up sensation that clogged his throat, suffocating him in the face of what he was about to do, and told Rick as firmly and strongly as he could, “I promise.”

Even to his ears, the promise sounded empty.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cutting it close again, I apologize, also I hope this doesn't have as many mistakes as the last chapter (my bad, I keep forgetting to send this to my beta before it's too late). This chapter gets violent, and so does the next one. Enjoy :)

\--

“Shit.”

Every quarter mile or so Daryl would see faded signs, over-grown with vegetation that also sprawled on the winding road that was leading them through a very large park, trees bracketing them on either side. Each sign saying “this way to the Kansas City zoo” in some form or another, and no matter how fast Daryl was driving there was no sign of the mini-van ahead of them. They were getting too close, really once they took the exit off the highway Daryl should’ve known that he wasn’t going to catch up with the group. 

Finally the road passed by a sloping hill, at the bottom a large entrance with tattered buildings and a gate, and a very empty parking lot – save for the fucking eye sore that was the maroon mini-van, scratched up and battered as it was, parked right against the gates with the door wide open. 

Those _idiots._

Daryl stopped on the road, having a better vantage point, and heard the jeep pull up behind him to also survey the area. He couldn’t see anything moving, and the loud grumble of the motorcycle’s engine would have at least made something scramble from hiding if it was lying in wait. After a minute he turned off the shuddering vehicle between his legs, letting the silence fall over them as Aarons followed suit – there was a soft chorus of leaves fluttering loudly in the breeze, bugs humming and birds chirping, but nothing else. 

Adrian, a lanky guy in his early 20’s with dusty hair and glasses, hopped out of the jeep to stand there with him and survey the area. Kid had a sharp eye, and could keep his head together better than his roommate – Luke, who was one of those frat boys like the ones that Merle loved to start brawls with when they passed through college towns. He was dark haired and had a face the girls fell over themselves for, but was clumsy as fuck. Least he knew cars though, and that had helped them in a pinch more than once.

“I don’t see anything,” Adrian told him quietly, voice soft and lacking the traces of Southern drawl most of the camp spoke with. Daryl nodded in agreement, but not saying anything else, and not wanting to go closer just yet. He knew what was out in the woods, knew he would probably have nightmares about it too, but he couldn’t imagine what was still inside the zoo. Didn’t really want to find out, either, but here they were. 

A loud echoing call came from inside the facility, deep in and far away, but it was repetitive and high-pitched, warbled and foreign and nothing Daryl had ever heard before. It made the hair on the back on his neck stand up, and his whole spine went rigid with tension. Until he heard a huff escape Aaron, Daryl’s gaze snapping to the man to see a damn _smile_ trying to crawl across his face. He saw Daryl’s accusing and confused stare, which only made him laugh at his old scouting partner.

“That was a peacock,” Aaron told him with still a breath of wonder. “It’s a really large bird with-“

“I know what a damn peacock is,” Daryl snapped, still glaring at Aaron.

“Forgot what they sounded like,” Adrian added wistfully on the other side of them, a smile starting to touch at his face too. And no, Daryl was not doing this shit.

“This ain’t a damn field trip,” he growled out, anger lacing every word and making the men with him seem to come back to center. “Got a better chance at gettin’ eaten today than ya have in a long time.”

“Well what else is new,” Aaron said with a cheeky grin. “Might prefer getting torn apart by a tiger than walkers.”

“I’ll just leave ya to it then if we get ambushed,” Daryl snarked back with a scowl, before sitting back down heavily on the bike and turning the engine over, drowning out Aaron’s amused laughter. 

\--

At the entrance there was still that silence that wasn’t really silence, wildlife having taken over the dead remains of the world just like everywhere else they ever came across. The peacock had stopped calling, wherever it was at, which helped because it had been getting on Daryl’s already frayed nerves. With his cross bow loaded and held tightly in his hands, Daryl led them through the gates, the chain cut with bolt cutters from the group that they had just missed.

The whole place smelled of a faint trace of decay and dust, and the rotting smell of fertilizer – which is what anything that couldn’t survive here had probably turned into. Daryl did his best to scan everything quickly, buildings with an IMAX theater and gift shop, restaurants and museums that littered the entrance, and signs pointed to different paths that would take them through the zoo towards the animals. Everything was over grown, abandoned, weathered and fading, but nothing was really _trashed_ – this wasn’t a place people would raid for supplies. 

But there were a few bits and pieces that were obviously made by man, boot prints and broken leaves, patterns in the gravel and debris that littered the area, and these traces were fresh. So Daryl tried his best to track the people they came to find, through the expanse of split concrete and crumbling brick pathways, all the while keeping a sharp eye out for movement. Anything that so much as _twitched_ was getting a bolt in it, he did _not_ want to be here – in this place that felt more like a trap than he wanted to admit. Walking into certain death was not always high on is priority list (no matter how often he seemed to do it), and neither was getting his ass chewed apart by a wild animal, so the fact he was in the one place where both were a possibility just reminded him what a _dumbass_ he really was. 

Luckily it seemed the group had stayed close to the entrance at first, the abandoned courtyard an easy area to survey. There were bronze statutes littered around, weathered but still shining proud in the early afternoon light, and the surrounding area was just covered in bits of plant and paper, eerily quiet with the strategically placed foliage now over-grown and spreading along the cement in sprawling tendrils. It was eerie but wild, and thankfully empty of any other wildlife – exotic or domestic.

The tracks that Daryl could faintly make out led them to the service entrances, past big swinging doors that read “EMPLOYEE ACCESS ONLY”, and towards some garages for loading docks and zoo property vehicles. Daryl listened carefully, hoping to hear the familiar tones of his people talking amongst themselves, or the clanking of metal on metal to show they were digging through the vehicles for the parts they needed. But there was nothing, in between the buildings and rounding to the open garage doors the silence pressed in on them with no bugs or birds around, and Daryl’s heart beat loudly in his ears as he crept forward. He felt too exposed, even with the three men trailing behind him heavily armed, and dread settled heavily like a thick substance at the back of his throat. They were not going to like whatever they found when they entered the garages, he could feel it. And everything still felt too directed, too easy, and he didn’t trust that. It put him on edge more than anything had in a long time, because it seemed more and more like they were just walking into a trap, though he hadn’t seen any signs of humans that would be able to set it. 

The smell hit them first.

They were used to the smell of rotting flesh, it stained the air and hung heavily when walkers were near, and in towns and cities they passed through it was always there. If it had been a similar smell, the dusty and putrid smell of decomposing human flesh, then Daryl’s shoulders may have relaxed a bit. But it wasn’t. The rotting smell was something else, something animal, and the garages seemed to hold heat better than hold cold, the humid air making it all smell even worse. Daryl reared back when the smell hit him first, not letting go of his crossbow, but shaking his head and almost chocking on the reeking odor. The others coughed, hiding their noses, and Luke even dry-heaved a little. But Daryl kept moving forward, each step slow and purposeful, crouched down to keep himself lower to the ground and quiet his foot falls. 

There was a bus with its hood popped open, some tools scattered around to help remove the engine, laid haphazardly on the ground among the splatters and pools of fresh blood and engine oil. Daryl’s shoulders had to be a solid knot with how tensely he was holding them, and he had to swallow back the lump in his throat as he thought about the missing kids. There was no way they would be in here, they would have fussed and cried at just smelling the garage, so they wouldn’t have even entered. But _someone_ had, and they were hurt – or worse. Fuck. 

But the kids hadn’t been in the van waiting, like Daryl had hoped they would be, so where were they?

 _“FUCK!”_ was screamed, followed by a loud crash and the tumble and fall of metal and plastic crates clattering to the ground. Daryl whipped around, crossbow up and finger on the trigger, only stopped a hair away from pulling it when he saw Luke hopping on one foot among the debris he knocked over. “Fuck-fuck- _fuck_ it hurts.”

“The shit did you do!?” Adrian hissed at him, Aaron and Daryl both shushing them loudly.

“You want to be a bit _louder_ next time,” Aaron told them angrily. “So _everything_ in this place can hear you?” Daryl was already scanning the entrances with only a hint of panic in his angry gaze, making sure nothing came running at the almost literal dinner bell that was just rang.

“Yer gonna get us fuckin’ killed!” Daryl snapped when the coast was clear, coming up to them in a raging storm of angry Southern drawl and a hint of his family’s aggression that he could never seem to shake. 

“I think I fucking broke something!” Luke almost shouted, but pain was painted across his features every time he tried to put weight on his foot. Fucking great.

“Sit down,” Daryl told him through his teeth, pointing to the ground until Luke lowered himself down. “And stay there.” Fuck these college kids, Aaron and he could’ve done this themselves. The three still functional men left Luke there to rest on the ground, trying to rotate his foot and wincing ever so often, before going to check different corners of the garage for any clue as to what happened. Daryl thought he saw Luke give up when a particular pained gasp was punched out of him, laying back until his head was against the cool cement floor.

The trail of blood he followed led him around the bus, small droplets and smears of footprints in it a prominent story of struggle, until he approached the back of the garage where no light reached. In the dimness he could make out something that made his heart stop. The blood spilled was thicker here, smeared in wide arches across the smooth floor that could only be made as a body was dragged through it. Torn up pieces of cloth and chunks of what looked like flesh speckled the smudged marks, and as soon as Daryl realized the pain in his chest wasn’t from his heart stopping, but from it beating so hard and fast against his rib cage, he started to back up away from the scene. Whoever was in the garage was dead, torn to shreds, and he didn’t really want to wait around and find out who it was. The footprints were too large to be children, the kids were elsewhere, and whatever did that was still around. The blood hadn’t even started to dry yet. 

They shouldn’t be here, they shouldn’t have stepped foot in this place, it didn’t belong to any man living or dead. It belonged to something else entirely. 

A scream pierced the air, echoed loudly against the tin walls of the garage, and panic surged through Daryl’s veins like fucking wildfire. The sound was too distorted with how it ricocheted for him to tell if it was Aaron or one of the college kids, but he tore ass back to the front of the garage and only skidded to a stop at the sight before him.

Luke had tried to curl up into a fetal position to escape the attacks on his limbs and face and throat, but the animal just grabbed him by the back of the neck and started dragging him away. Adrian trying to shoot it but kept missing, the bullets bouncing off stone and machinery alike. Aaron was coming after it with a tire iron but the animal was too large, hunched and wretched-looking, like some kind of dog from hell – and Daryl didn’t know what it was. He had sworn he’d seen it before in a movie, barrel-chested and a square head, speckled like a leopard with a mohawk like ridge of hair up its spine and head. Its teeth were huge, snarled, and it was easily over-powering Luke with the few strategic bites it had managed in its blitz attack. Its teeth and jaws so powerful that it had torn through his skin and tendons like Daryl’s tore through a candy wrapper, and then proceeded to drag him deep into the darkness of the garage. Leaving a trail of blood behind him in the same smear patterns Daryl had found in the back. 

His crossbow was up and aimed in a second, trying to get a shot that wouldn’t hit Luke’s flailing limbs, but he was stalled. A warbled sound like laughter mixed with the screams and snarls and shouting, making Daryl’s gaze snap up to the open doors bathed in sunlight. Only to see they were surrounded, the high-pitched yips of laughter becoming louder as a fucking _pack_ of the creatures moved forward in slow stalking movements. 

It _was_ a trap.

And they were so fucked.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter is short, and gruseome as all get out so mind the tags. Here is that animal gore and violence I promised. Also I'm so sorry I haven't replied to any comments from last week yet, I'm visiting my Mother and keep loosing track of time. I will get to all you lovely people who left me your kind words very soon <3 No beta again, I was cutting it close adding in some stuff, so if there's any glaring mistakes I apologize. Enjoy :)

\--

They didn’t make it in time to save Luke.

A sickening crunch cut off his screams, the shrill sounds dying in his throat wetly and the jerking flail of his limbs reduced to the spasms of the animal’s teeth in his spinal cord. 

Daryl was too preoccupied by the ring of large animals that cackled and giggled while they moved in, chirping warbled barks spoken to each other in glee as they entered the garage, nails from their mud and blood slicked paws clicking against the cement floor with each step. The blood and gore stuck to the fur on their legs was a mess of rotting flesh and dark, weeks old blood. Animals licked themselves clean, Daryl knew this like he knew the sun rose in the East and that Rick’s eyes were the clearest blue he’d ever seen, so there was no way that the remains weren’t from a fresh kill. It hit him like a punch to the face when he put the pieces together. 

They were eating the walkers.

Two lunged forward, one getting Daryl’s loaded arrow piercing through its wide mouth as it snarled and laughed all in one motion – cutting short with a choked off whimper as the arrow tore through its throat. 

The other got past him, past Aaron and Adrian to pounce on the still warm pile of meat that had been Luke, the two tearing at the flesh with sharp teeth and violent movements. The delightful sounds of food that wasn’t putrid and lacking blood drove the rest of the pack forward. _Four_ more, charging at the remaining men in the garage as well as the meal already waiting for them and leaking blood onto the ground. These animals were scavengers, the way most went for the already dead man on the ground first told Daryl that much, but they weren’t afraid to snap their gaping jaws at Daryl’s ankles, circle each one of the remaining men standing and try to find a way in. They looked wary that Daryl was fighting back, that Aaron was swinging the crowbar at them, that Adrian shot one closest to him in the shoulder – the sound bouncing off the tin walls loudly. Too loudly, they were going to draw more animals in at this rate. 

But the giant – dogs? He wasn’t sure, he knew he’d _seen_ them before, amid lions and giraffes and shit on TV. The laughing barks were getting on his nerves, shredding his patience as he quickly unsheathed his hunting knife with one hand, swinging his crossbow across his back for the moment and arming his other hand with his pistol. The large animal too close and snarling ravenously, revealing long fangs with pulled back lips and a disgusting odor of rotting meat panted with each breath. At any rate, they leapt back at each attack, looked to try and get at the easy meal on the ground, and Daryl realized they weren’t use to their food fighting back. They attacked the dead, which might try to bite and scratch at them blindly in an attempt to eat them first, but the group had taken down two of the pack already – they didn’t hunt to kill unless it was injured or already dead. 

They probably thought Luke was another corpse, lying still on the ground. 

Shit – hyenas. He _knew_ he knew what they were! Those fucking giggly assholes from ‘The Lion King’ and shit, his memories of the cartoon paling in comparison to the giant animal he was about to fight off with his bare hands. Shit he was not ready for this. 

It snapped at him and he swiped his knife out in retaliation to keep it back, carefully inching back and forth on the balls of his feet and making his way around so his back was covered, the animal never taking its eyes off him and Daryl doing the same. He would stare this damn thing down, get it in range so he could shoot it and the others – because Adrian was a shit shot and they needed to end this and get out _now_. All he could hear was the tear of flesh and fabric, snarls and sharp breathing and the scramble of feet, and all Daryl could do was keep himself alive long enough to help the other two that were still breathing. 

Then Aaron screamed his name. 

Daryl shot the animal in front of him without a second thought, right between the eyes, and whipped around and aimed for the largest piece of spotted fur he could find on the creature that was _on top_ of the other man, teeth buried in his shoulder as another sunk it’s jaws into his calf and _pulled_. Adrian was out of bullets and also had teeth marks in his arm from one that must have caught him by surprise. Daryl had missed if he had shot it too or if it had let go of him when Aaron went down. Daryl’s pistol was louder than the glock Adrian had been armed with, the pack recoiled with each shot as Daryl took down two, and it caused them to retreat. Abandoning Aaron on the ground and Luke’s corpse at the back to high-tail it out of the garage area yipping the entire time. Three made it out alive, Daryl shooting after them and taking down another as the final duo collided with _five more_ that had been lying in wait past the next set of garage doors. 

Fuck – how many were there? 

He watched after them a moment, making sure they didn’t come back around, before going to his friend’s side. Adrian had flipped Aaron over, helping him sit up – though the man breathed heavily and shook in the terror that still coursed through him, he appeared okay except for his leg. It was ripped apart, shredded tendons and the calf muscle a stringy bloody mess that was not going to be fixable. Daryl couldn’t even suck in a pained breath, could barely swallow the hard lump in his throat, hands suddenly in Aaron’s space and fumbling for his belt to use as a tourniquet. 

“How bad,” Aaron panted through the pain, adrenaline and endorphins helping his words sound more normal than they should. 

“Bad,” Adrian answered, and Daryl didn’t – telling the recruiter all he needed to know. He sighed painfully, closing his eyes in anger and frustration, and let Daryl tie off his leg at the thigh before he motioned for the hunter to help him up. His shoulder wasn’t as bad, but he wouldn’t be able to walk anymore. 

“We need to leave,” Adrian said quietly, helping hold Aaron up with his shoulder under the older man’s arm. “ _Now_ , before they come back.”

“Don’t think they’ll come back after that,” Aaron told him, eyeing the dead corpses that now littered the service area. 

“Yeah they will,” Daryl answered lowly, looking out where the pack had disappeared to, his crossbow back in his hands and armed once more. “Won’ leave this free food lyin’ here.”

“Let’s go – back to the van, we need to get him back,” Adrian said with heavy breaths, terror and the need to leave this place lacing every word. The young man starting to shake also, though Daryl couldn’t tell if it was from his wound on his arm or from the fear finally taking over in the adrenaline’s wake. 

“We need to find the kids,” Aaron snapped, pain making him irritable. “Came all this way, can’t leave now.”

“Kids ain’t in here, no tracks,” Daryl growled back. 

“Then you and Adrian go and find them,” Aaron glared, locking blue eyes on Daryl’s own. “Get them and bring them back with us, I can wait another hour.”

“I’m not going anywhere but back to the theater!” 

“Shut up,” both Aaron and Daryl snapped in unison before going back to glaring at each other.

“You wanted to come out here,” Aaron told him, realizing the words’ impact when Daryl flinched back in guilt, but he didn’t take them back. “We can’t go back with nothing to show for it, find them – or find what’s left. We need to get this behind us and move on, put as much distance between us and this place as we can.” Daryl’s face was stoic and hard, watching the other man behind his long bangs and clenching his jaw tight, head tucked down in that way when he was still rearing for a fight. “I’ll be fine in the van, nothing can get in.” He added, and Daryl’s resolve was crumbling slowly – Aaron had done this many times during their time on the road. He knew how to whittle away at the hunter’s stubborn decisions and get him to see things his way.

He also tended to forget Daryl’s decisions were usually the better ones.

“We’re losing daylight,” Aaron sighed after a few moments of silence. 

With the slightest incline of his head, the closest thing to a nod the other man was going to get, Daryl led the way back to the entrance. Slowly, tensely, each pained step made low to the ground and crossbow clutched tight, finger on the trigger and ready to pull at the slightest bit of movement. Aaron was slow moving, using Adrian as a crutch, trickling blood like a trail of bread crumbs behind them. But they made it to the front gate, Daryl’s ears ringing with the warbled laughter of the hyenas, and his mind playing tricks on him when the wind whistled through the various plants and structures around them – echoing the high pitched barks and making him jerk around only to find nothing waiting for them. 

They got Aaron into the back of the car with only a little struggle, Daryl ripping up that stupid blue jacket with his hunting knife and tying off his friend’s leg. Wrapping it tight and making sure to adjust the tourniquet on his leg accordingly. Adrian cleared away the wound with some bottles of water stashed under the seats, and then tried to do the same with his own, a panicked worry settling over his features as he thought hard about something until it hit him and shock took over his face.

“What?” Daryl ground out, there was no way this could get worse than it was.

“They were eating the walkers weren’t they?” his voice shook as he asked, and when Daryl nodded all the colour drained from the young man’s face. “Y-You think – them biting us – will get us infected?” Aaron’s whole body stilled under Daryl’s hands, and he looked between them both carefully. 

“We’re all infected kid,” Daryl told him, tying the tourniquet a bit too tight and jostling Aaron out of his stupor with a pained hiss. 

“Hyenas eat corpses, they got all sorts of bacteria in their mouths I bet,” he rasped, looking like he’d been struck in the face. “It’s going to get infected one way or another.”

“If it kills ya it won’ matter,” Daryl muttered, getting Aaron’s leg propped like how Carol use to do for Hershel – not knowing if it was going to help or not but it was all he had to go on – and slid out of the vehicle to stand by Adrian. Nodding to his old scouting partner, a silent salute that let Aaron know Daryl knew he had this covered, before he turned and eyed the young man next to him. “Ya ready for this?”

“No,” Adrian answered honestly, still trembling a bit and looking at the blood seeping through the makeshift bandage on his arm. It matched the flecks of blood on his face and in his dusty hair. “But I can’t let you go in alone.” His eyes were insanely green behind his glasses, wide and scared but also resolved. Kid was smart, a shit shot, but he would be better to have at Daryl’s back than nothing.

“Could stay here,” he still offered, shouldering his crossbow and preparing to shut the sliding van door behind Aaron, giving the kid one last out before they went back inside the zoo.

Adrian just laughed humorously, thought it sounded a little hysterical and upturned the corners of his mouth in an expression closer to exasperation. “If I did that I’d _really_ be dead,” at Daryl’s confused blink a real smile blended into the hysterical one. “Rick would fucking kill me.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for missing last week, I've been really under the weather and then it got crazy at work. But here's this week's chapter! We have to skip on back and see what Rick is up to while Daryl's been fighting off hyenas. Thank you so much for all the comments and kudos <3 you all rock! No beta again (sorry), enjoy :)

\--

Worn in boots scoured the same path up and down the stage area, back and forth and back again, tracking the seconds that ticked by with each step. The light of day still brightening everything it touched, but the sun was starting to dip towards the West, threatening to darken the sky and beckon everyone who hadn’t been hailed by radio back home. Anyone who was out of range or signal would be surprised to find that the old warrior school bus was back up and running again – thanks to Maggie, Glenn, and Sasha coming across a graveyard of the abandoned vehicles in a school parking lot not ten miles out. They had plenty to pick from and cannibalized a few machines to get the working parts, carting them back in an old pick-up truck and having everything re-installed before mid-afternoon.

Rick had helped Glenn get everything in place, some of the parts too heavy for one man to lift, so his still grease-stained fingers were leaving slick black marks on his chin and cheeks, smudges on his hairline after running his fingers through his curls nervously. Motions that were so second-nature in his fretful worry that he didn’t notice he had done it the first few times, but by the time evening had started to approach he was beyond the point of caring. 

Because Daryl wasn’t back yet.

Logically he knew that he had been pacing far longer than what would have been deemed a decent time for the hunter and company to have reached the zoo, found the missing people from his group, the kids who were probably scared out of their minds, and then returned back to the amphitheater. But that time had come and passed, it had been hours since he had last spoken with Daryl over the radio, and he had been gone almost the entirety of the day. Each minute that passed closed the vice around his heart just a little bit tighter, until it was almost too hard to breathe – the sight of the sun threatening to dip beyond the trees making panic start to inch into his expression and ministrations. Hence the pacing, the constant movement of his hands, the war in his head that was saying something was wrong and he needed to ¬ _do something_. But radioing the other man was too dangerous, he had no idea what was going on with him or what situation he might be in, and leaving the theater could separate them if he was already on his way back. 

But God it was so hard to stay in one spot. 

“Daddy?” Rick almost tripped over his own boots, the break in his pace jolting him from his thoughts, at the sound of his daughter’s voice coming from behind him. He turned without looking too hurried, at least, and tried to smile at the little girl who was watching him warily. In a way that held too much wisdom (and probably a little too much sass) than what a three-year-old should possess. He wasn’t sure if he should blame Michonne or Carl for that. 

“Hey sweetheart,” he said as evenly as he could, happy for the distraction. “Somethang wrong?” From the way her large brown eyes peered at him behind messy curls, as if not sure what to make of him, Rick should’ve known it wasn’t going to be one of those simple questions that she could ramble off for hours on end. It was going to be one of the awkward ones, that held way too much honestly and the answers were always hard to be truthful about. 

“Why are you walkin’ around up here?” she asked bluntly, whether from curiosity or from worry it was hard to hell, that little girl was going to be hell at poker one day. He’d have to make sure Daryl didn’t teach her too soon, he taught Carl back when he was twelve years old and Rick hadn’t won a hand since. 

“It’s just – something I do when I’m nervous honey,” Rick tried to explain to the small girl, coming up to her and lifting her into his arms so they could talk face to face. She still watched him warily, trying to piece the puzzle together that was her father, looking like she was attempting to justify his odd behavior.

“What’cha nervous about?” she drawled a little too thickly, but still quiet and unsure, a combined effort of listening to Daryl when they were out in the woods alone and her father’s futile efforts at story-time before bed. No matter how much the others talked with her, taught Judi her letters or looked after her during the day, the little girl still modeled her speech patterns after her two parental figures. A good ol’ Southern boy from Kentucky, and a backwoods redneck from the boondocks of Georgia. Not exactly the greatest examples of the English language. 

“Just waiting for everyone ta get back,” Rick sighed, trying to smile at his daughter reassuringly, but she wasn’t having any of it.

“Where did they go? Is Daryl with ‘em?” she brought her hand to her mouth at the mention of the other man she also considered her dad, which always warmed Rick’s heart. She said Daryl’s name now instead of ‘Dare’ like she use to when she was even smaller and couldn’t pronounce everything, but the _way_ she said it held the same sentiment as when she said ‘Daddy’, sometimes even more so. He caught her hand and pulled it away from her nervous nibbling (that she 100% picked up from mimicking the redneck he loved so much) and held on to it, catching her gaze and holding that as well. 

“Yes,” Rick told her, feeling his nerves start to gnaw away at him again at the mention of what Daryl was out there doing. “Daryl went to find some people that’re missing, he’s just not back yet.” He couldn’t continue that sentence, tell her that Daryl would be back – even though the other man had promised – because in the world that surrounded them there _were_ no guarantees. And that scared him to death.

“He’ll be back soon,” Judi said, and it wasn’t a question. She knew it as a solid fact, proven time and time again when the hunter would disappear and return no matter how much time passed or what obstacles he faced when he was gone. He didn’t always come back whole, scratched up and bruised, cut up, missing people or vehicles or weapons. But he always came back to them. And that stark fact told with such certainty from the girl in Rick’s arms was like a slap to the face. “He will,” she glared at him accusingly, as if Rick’s wide blue eyes and absence of words were somehow challenging her statement. “So stop actin’ weird.” Rick wasn’t sure if the sound that escaped him was a caged laugh or him choking on nothing. “And put me down.”

Rick did as he was told before the three-year-old tumbled out of his arms with her squirming. When she was standing on her own two feet she looked up at him again with a stare that was more exasperation than anything and it made him want to laugh – but he kept his chuckle behind closed lips that tilted into a small smile. “Daryl can track anythin’, he can find a bunch’a grown ups easy. Why do y’all get lost all the time?” it was such a Daryl thing to say, mutter under his breath back when he was a hot-head with an attitude and preferred to glare at all of them than help. But would always do so anyway, Daryl was always helping people – that’s what got them into this mess in the first place. With Rick pacing so hard he was wearing a hole in the ground, fretting like a nervous house-wife, a taste of his own medicine it seemed after what he put Lori through for years as a Sheriff’s deputy. 

“Grown-ups aren’t always so smart I guess,” he smiled down at her, making her grin back triumphantly.

“We’re _way_ smarter than you, even found the hidin’ place that’s much better than hidin’ in the cars! Me an’ Cecilia showed Miss Margaret before all the grown-ups lef’ this morning, she liked it so much she told us we can stay there ‘til we left fer our new camp.” The bright beam on Judi’s face made it harder for the words to register, and Rick knew his face was slack as his mind caught up, and then he was kneeling down and holding Judi in place so he could get her attention undivided. 

“Judi,” Rick said, words so breathless it was hard to force them out. “Where’s your hiding place?”

She blinked at him in confusion at the change of pace, but answered like the good girl she was. “Out ‘n the woods, by the treehouse.”

“What treehouse? Judi, I need you to show me.” 

She shrunk back a little, a pout threatening to pull at her lips. “But it’s a secret.”

“An’ we’ll keep it a good secret, baby. Jus’ you and me, but I need you to show me.” Rick's heart was beating so hard in his chest it was hurting him, but if the kids were there he needed to get them back _now_ so he could hail Daryl and tell him to get back home. Daryl was the priority, he always would be. 

\--

Margaret had taken a radio that wasn’t set to the right frequency, and had essentially been in radio silence out in the woods –her dutiful bond to keeping the kids safe restricting her from coming to find out if the camp was still even in one piece. For that Rick was grateful, but the entire day had been wasted because Clara had decided to go off with her husband and a few others to get parts at the zoo, failing to tell anyone the whereabouts of the woman watching the camp’s children. 

After Judi had led him to her secret hideout in the woods, and they had returned as quickly as they could back to the safety behind the thick black gates of the amphitheatre, Rick raced to the top of the hill where reception was best and started calling Daryl’s name over the radio. And Aaron’s. And Adrian and Luke, and then Daryl again.

“ _Daryl_ , come in!” Rick called again and waited a long draw out moment of silence, tense and fraying at his nerves like nothing else. The only thing that answered him was static, stretching for long minutes that clawed at his chest and ripped it apart like walkers. “You son’uva’bitch _answer me!_ DARYL!” His mind raced, his breath was ragged and strangling him, he didn’t have many options here and Daryl _wasn’t fucking answering._

There were only so many reasons Daryl wouldn’t answer, and none of them were good. 

The sun had started to dip beyond the trees, tinting the sky different vibrant colors like splotches of paint on canvas, and the heavy change in light weighed down his heart as the sun faded. Sinking lower and physically paining him the longer he desperately tried to get Daryl to answer him. Rick would never leave Daryl alone in that place, something that could be more dangerous than anything they had ever come across, and it was driving him mad that he hadn’t left to look for the redneck earlier. 

The madness was what made him want to drive out into the dark and bring Daryl back, no matter where he was or what state he was in. He needed to be _home_ , with Rick and their family, like he had promised.

But therein lied the problem, Daryl had _promised_ he’d be back by nightfall, and if Rick left and someone missed the hunter on his return home? If he was injured and not there to help him, wasn’t where he said he’d be so Daryl could come back to him? There was a long list of things Rick would never forgive himself for, and abandoning Daryl Dixon was at the very top. It was his own racing mind that was blinding him with insanity, proving every scenario showed that was exactly what he was doing – no matter what he was leaving Daryl on his own. 

Daryl had said that he would be _right back_ , a phrase he used often – when he went on a run, or a hunt, or he and Rick had argued and he needed a minute to himself – it basically said 'I got this, don’t follow me.' Every time the redneck drawled those words it was like a double-tap shot to Rick’s chest, they always sounded so final and daunting. Despite their meaning. It felt too much like tempting fate, and Rick had never thought of himself as superstitious, but he should’ve known that the one time Daryl had said he would be 'right back' and was mistaken – would be the worst time for him to be wrong. 

The sun disappeared behind the trees, and Rick clutched the radio so hard the plastic creaked from the strain, the screaming static of the radio the only noise in the surrounding dark.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm going to switch my update days to Tuesdays, my weekends are too hectic sadly to get everything ready and posted, so hopefully moving it to the middle of the week will help me stay on time :) This one isn't that exciting, (and the thing that happens in Australia happened to me and scared the SHIT out of me at the time because they don't keep those particular animals in any kind of cage and I didn't know that at the time) but it's going to GET exciting - plus plot happens and it's important to the craziness later. Hopefully y'all still enjoy it <3 Thanks again for all the comments and kudos, I'm going to go reply to stuff and thangs now! Un-beta'd again, enjoy :)

\--

When they left Aaron in the van, Daryl had every intention of leaving his radio with the injured man. He would need it more than they would, after all Aaron was safe locked up in a van where his chance of being torn apart was monumentally less than Daryl and Adrian’s. But when he reached where it had been secured to his back pocket, turned off just in case it decided to crackle to life at the _wrong_ time, he realized it was no longer there. 

It must have fallen off back in the service garages. 

Shit.

There was no way he could go back for it, not with the pack still circling the fresh kills that probably tasted so much better than walkers. The hyenas probably pissed and more ready for round two than Daryl was. 

Aaron must have noticed, too, because he locked eyes with Daryl when he saw the man reach for the radio and look confused. Their radio was all the way up the hill back in the jeep, and Daryl thought to go and grab it for him – someone should be in contact with the group – but the recruiter shook his head, trying to put on a reassuring smile. Like everything would be fine, there was no need to worry, or go out of his way. They just had to do a quick sweep and make sure the kids weren’t in the zoo, and then they could load up and be back to the theatre by nightfall. Daryl nodded back curtly, barely a tilt of his head, agreeing that it at least wouldn’t take very long.

He didn’t plan on spending any more time than he had to in that place, where the wild ran free and dangers were something far beyond his control. Daryl knew animals, their instincts and how they acted in the wild, it was something second nature to him – but these captive animals had a mutant way of thinking, a mixture of natural instinct and trained responses becoming something so out of his realm he didn’t want to spend more than two seconds trying to decipher it. There was no telling what the world now had turned them into, being surrounded by humans for so long and then having the same shapes smell like death and try to eat them instead of feed them, a broken bond of trust that may have left them defensive and jagged and ready to fight back. They had to, to survive. So had Daryl, and Rick, and their whole group, so Daryl didn’t begrudge them one bit for it – he just didn’t want to be anywhere near it. Not when the animals either couldn’t tell the difference between the survivors and the walkers, or just didn’t care either way.

So Daryl and Adrian left Aaron there, holed up in the sturdy maroon mini-van that had gotten them through so many tough times already, and made their way back through the daunting gates of the Kansas City Zoo. Only a determined madness driving them forward, so vast and over-whelming in its terror that they were prepared to risk their lives – to seek something they didn’t even know would be there. 

Daryl’s crossbow was up and armed, muscles locked in place and finger on the trigger, the weapon becoming an extension of himself even as they walked down the wide pathways over grown with trees and grass. Leaves and dirt having made their way onto the cement paths through wind and rain and the unrelenting seasons, slicking it and quieting their footsteps on the concrete – which made Daryl feel better as they ventured further into the park. Faded signs pointed to different areas that they could have viewed years ago: the primate house, the sea lions, the big cats and the aviaries. The paths split and came together in a web that was meant to make the patrons stay inside the park for as long as possible, making it very easy to get lost among the houses and walkways that all looked the same with forests bordering on either side. 

It was what must have made the others get lost, because Daryl wasn’t just aimlessly leading Adrian on a tour of the abandoned zoo, there were traces of footprints among the leaves and dirt, a distinct path of someone running. Two people, actually, and one with a bad limp that was bleeding steadily. When Adrian noticed the blood was what they were following his pale face grew ashen, and his eyes wide and afraid behind his glasses, but he didn’t falter his steps or let go of his weapon. And for that Daryl gave the kid a lot of credit, he was also very quiet when he walked and didn’t try to speak to him while they ventured further and further into the heart of the zoo. There was a chance they’d make it out alive after all, it looked like. 

The path led them through South Asia and detoured through Australia, trying to wrap around back to the front of the park, and Australia itself had a short gate to go through – overgrown with brush and vines that made it impossible to turn the counter. Daryl hopped it easily, already turning the corner before Adrian had managed to climb over, and stopped in his tracks at the animals laying in the shaded path. It took him a minute to process, and lower his weapon when he recognized what they were. There must have been a dozen kangaroos, as tall as him, lying on the ground and lounging in the sun and shade depending on their preference it seemed. They barely flicked their ears at him as he stood in the path about 50 yards from them, Adrian coming up behind him and sucking in a breath, also not sure what he was seeing was real. But everything stayed quiet, nothing really moving, which after a tense moment shook the hunter from his stupor. Needless to say, Daryl took the path that veered to the right – away from where the small herd of animals had taken refuge in the middle of the fucking path, they didn’t seem to give two shits about the humans in their park that weren’t ambling towards them with rotting flesh – and in turn Daryl didn’t give two shits about some tall ass fuzzy… things that didn’t have sharp teeth or claws. He’d pick his battles, and trying to wade through a sea of fucking kangaroos wasn’t on his list. His damn life, honestly. 

They picked back up the trail on the other side, something having driven the two they were tracking back and away from the entrance again, and Daryl’s anger was starting to simmer beneath his skin. He wasn’t sure what these dumbasses were doing, but as he saw more distinct patterns in the ground – he realized the tracks were both adult-sized prints, and that the kids weren’t with them in the park. They had to be back at camp, or just outside of it, or something. Clara wouldn’t have brought them here, Aaron had been right, that woman was stubborn as a fucking mule but she wasn’t stupid. Or at least completely stupid. But Daryl did consider her having some kind of death wish, given her choices the past 12 hours. The odds heeded similar outcomes for the woman, from either crossing something exotic and hungry in the zoo – or pissing off Rick Grimes. 

“Maybe we should just head back?” Adrian spoke quietly as they walked down another path, shaded in a canopy of leaves from large trees bordering it, sunlight making scattered patterns along the ground that moved with the breeze. It was getting late in the afternoon, and they had been lucky enough to not come across anything besides the Kangaroos. Daryl slowed to a stop, having relaxed his crossbow a while ago – the park was truly abandoned, they hadn’t seen anything in the bright sunshine, and hadn’t heard anything but far off calls and chirps and the sound of their own footsteps mixed with the breeze-ruffled leaves. He turned and looked at Adrian instead of answering him, being out among something that felt so much like the woods of Georgia – where nature in the backwoods had taken over every single aspect, including human-made structures and signs and fences – reverting him back to the quiet hunter that barely spoke two words to anyone. There was no need for words or talking, usually, in the quietness among the trees. 

Adrian seemed to squirm under his gaze, stoic and nonchalant and judgmental all at once, but the need to get out of the zoo out-weighing any calm Daryl might have been giving off. Daryl himself was zen and prepared now that they’d gone so long without seeing anything – it would be easier to spot something now when they did. Daryl had no illusions that they wouldn’t cross another animal in the park on their way out – his luck just wasn’t that good. And evening was fast approaching, most animals were more dormant during the day, at night the predators thrived so the two needed to be out and away from the epicenter of everything before darkness fell. Though from the way it was looking, maybe all the animals had left the zoo – spread out in the surrounding areas instead of staying near the decaying source. 

“The kids aren’t here,” Adrian continued, still looking nervous – like he might still be wrong – but Daryl gave him a slight nod in approval. Kid was smarter than he looked. 

“No they ain’t,” Daryl confirmed, shifting his weight and scanning the area once more. Since they were standing in one spot and not moving he couldn’t be too careful. 

“We – we haven’t seen anything either,” Adrian tried to press when Daryl didn’t continue. “No animals or anything, maybe they went back to the entrance after getting away from, you know – whatever was chasing them.” The fact he saw something had been chasing them, driving them deeper into the park, should have told the college student that he was at least wrong about there not being any animals.

“Maybe,” Daryl muttered, chewing on his lip in a nervous tick while keeping his head up and alert, it was quiet but it wasn’t so quiet the place seemed empty. Adrian couldn’t hear it, but Daryl could. As they walked from section to abandoned section of the park, soft distant sounds of hooves, grunts of breath, running water. There were animals here, somewhere, living and thriving in all the corners and hidden spaces of the zoo. There were only two questions left unanswered: _where_ the animals were hiding, and _how_ they were still alive in the first place. Their natural instincts should have driven them far from the place, even if they saw it as home, so it kept nagging at the back of Daryl’s mind that maybe – just _maybe_ – something else was convincing them to stay.

Like food.

And authority.

Something that only another human could give them, in a captive-bred existence such as this. 

He started up the path with Adrian still trying to talk to him, persuade him to start back toward the entrance, stuttered words and phrases that Daryl was at this point out right ignoring because the path turned into an open vanity area. An expanse with a rock wall that looked out over a heavily grass-filled plain that spread at least a half mile. Daryl ducked as soon as he saw it, littered in specks of neutral and bright colors alike, crouched down until he knew he couldn’t hide anymore and hit the ground – army crawling forward with his crossbow still in both hands. Making him more inch worm than army crawl, but he wasn’t letting go of his weapon for anything. He just had to see it for himself. 

Reaching the sandstone wall, he looked over the edge and saw what must have been near a hundred animals – dozens upon dozens in patches of herds that intermingled or kept their distance when territories started to flare up. A fuck ton of water buffalo, some zebras, a few of the kangaroos from before hop-crawling near the trees that Daryl recognized as the direction they had seen the group before. Some various deer and other hoofed animals Daryl didn’t fucking know the names of, and a vast array of birds as well. Though some must have been local, the fucking peacock wasn’t – bright as a rainbow and picking away at the shore by a man-made watering hole. And –

“Holy fuck that’s an elephant,” Adrian gasped next to him, making Daryl flinch at the close proximity. He pulled his crossbow up, making sure it was loaded and ready and still in his hands, pressing his back to the wall as he tried to _breathe_ through how hard his heart was beating in his chest. There was too many fucking animals, there was no goddamn way they would all survive on their own, which meant someone else had to be in this zoo. And they were letting the hyenas have free reign, the large cats out to do whatever they want, playing God in the most awful way. A fucking modern-day Noah’s Arc in the form of a crumbling old zoo in the middle of fucking _nowhere_. Whoever it was had to be insane, and dangerous.

Daryl peeked over the edge again, could barely fathom that there was a few _elephants_ just tossing water on their backs in the slowly setting sun like it was no big deal they were even alive. And the dozen different species just milling about, slowly starting to make their way towards the forests – seeming to know that it was time to turn in and what direction to go. It was surreal, like something out of the discovery channel, and Daryl had never witnessed anything like it before. It wasn’t like he’d ever actually been to a zoo before, so the animals behaving the way they did in a hive-like mind that stuck to species was both entrancing to watch and confusing to the point of nerve-wracking. How could there be such _order_ in such a state of chaos?

“They do move in herds,” Adrian whispered lowly, the hints of a smile tearing at his face, and Daryl couldn’t stop the slow turn of his head to level a glare at the college student. “Jurassic Park?” he tried with a wavering quirk of his lips, “no?” Daryl’s eyes narrowed to slits and he huffed through his nose in exasperation, was this _really_ the fucking time for that shit? But something caught Adrian’s eye, head jolting up and eyes wide behind his glasses. “Daryl.” Whipping around to look over the low stone wall once more, Daryl raised his crossbow again and scanned the field until he saw them.

Moving swift and quiet, low to the ground and hidden in the drying tall grass so well they were almost impossible to see, were a few of the predators that Daryl had wanted to avoid at all costs. Light tan fur that blended with their surroundings, large bodies moving so quiet and powerful it spoke volumes of what they could do if in close proximity. And like _fuck_ Daryl was going to be in any form of proximity with the small pride of _lions_ that were circling the herds. Fucking _shit_. It was evening, the sun was beginning to set over the sea of trees, which meant it was dinner time and they needed to be as _far away_ from where they were hiding as fast as humanly possible.

“C’mon,” Daryl murmured, whispered so quietly if Adrian hadn’t been right next to him he probably wouldn’t have been heard, and they backed up slow and silent while still being on the ground. Making their way back down the slope until they could get to their feet, stand properly without being seen – and then they _ran_.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright so this chapter gave me SO much trouble, because I had to basically rewrite the whole thing in preparation for _next_ chapter - in which something awesome happens. So this is a double update to make up for last week, enjoy :)

\--

The trees surrounding the trails came alive around them as Daryl and Adrian rushed back down the paths they had so painstaking crept through earlier in the day. Every bird, insect, and creature that had lay quiet and dormant during the daytime hours now risen with the cool night air to screech and chirp and echo calls loudly across the park, speaking at length and in various volumes, roaring on both sides in a disorienting white-noise as the two men beat their feat against the debris-filled walkways. Daryl had his crossbow pointed high, clutched tight with his finger on the trigger - prepared to swing down into position at a moment’s notice, but up and out of the way as he tried to navigate his way back to the entrance of the zoo.

As dusk fell and darkness began to seep into every crevasse, like water slowly filling up a previously dry stream, visibility was becoming worse and worse – surroundings giving into the dark shadows making every turn and corner and distant cage or animal house all look the _exact_ same as they darted down the paths. Daryl could only guess how fast those damn lions could run, and he was sure that he and Adrian weren’t spotted leaving but if the predators had caught wind of the two men _at all_ there wasn’t much they could do but beat pavement and hope to find a place to hide.

Because as they doubled back more than once, it was easy to see that in the dark – no moon in the night sky to give them any kind of light source – they weren’t going to make it very far when everything else that could see them running around like idiots had sharp teeth and a hunger for something that wasn’t rotting flesh. It was obvious the predators were not only eating the other animals in the park, but the walkers as well, lack of the roaming bodies was proof enough of that. But what really grated on Daryl’s already rattled nerves was the out-right disobedience of instinct that was so apparent in every animal still residing in the park. They weren’t contained, they were comfortable with the paths and houses and human structures like they had always belonged to them, like it was given to them. He had the horrifying thought that maybe, during the first days of the outbreak, someone had set the animals free – so they could fight back against the hoards of walkers. A test, survival of the fittest, first against the walkers and then against the elements, and all that remained could thrive within the dense forests and abandoned streets. Their territory was now the sprawling city that his family was trying to pass through,  and there was no telling what would await them between the broken buildings and in the tall grass of the rolling hills. Someone had decided to play God, and had created a kingdom out of it.

Daryl heard them in the white-noise of the late evening before he saw what else was on the path, their only saving grace as he skidded to a stop and grabbed Adrian by the back of the shirt before he could get in front of him, pulling the young man aside and behind some towering bushes that had long over-grown from their well-manicured state. The clicking of nails on concrete, the sharp barks and yips that sounded like laughter in the clear night air, the redneck almost _wished_ it had been anything else – the growl of a lion, the huff of something large and hoofed, he’d take on fucking anything that wasn’t that damn pack of hyenas. Because they flanked out in groups of three, triangular formations and cackling, breathing heavy – nipping at each other’s now gore-free feet with no traces of blood left. They had licked themselves clean, and were looking for a new meal. Something fresher than what lay waiting in the garage, Daryl bet it had been a long time since the large animals had eaten something that wasn’t diseased or rotting, so that taste for fresh flesh and pumping hot blood coated their teeth and tongues and made them salivate for something just as good. He bet the pack knew that the foreign humans were still in the park, and the archer got a chilling sensation that he and Adrian were being hunted down.

Walking backwards very carefully, still pulling on Adrian’s shirt like a mother hauling a cub by the scruff of its neck, Daryl caught the other’s eye and only let go to put his finger to his lips and then point the direction they were going. They were going to have to cut through the woods, off the trail, and Daryl hoped to _God_ that Adrian’s quiet footsteps would translate to the busy forest floor between the trees. Crossbow now in its normal position, an extension of his arms as Daryl clasped it tight and held it in tense hands and aimed only a little below the horizon, the hunter led the way through the dense foliage that had grown wild in the past few years, swallowing up any spaces that would allow entry. He had to duck under branches and brush through leaves with the most careful of motions, so as not to make too much noise, painfully aware of the pack that moved in the opposite direction as them down the cement path. Almost in tandem, and Daryl noticed he was barely breathing after a few moments had passed and he thought the trio of exotic beasts had curved around the bend in the path closest to them – and out of sight. Ultimately glad he stopped before exiting the treeline, because a different trio darted down another path that interwove with the previous one, dragging what must have been a stray predator’s meal – what looked like a deer leg in its mouth.

The trios of hyenas were picking through the streets like the damn Gestapo, and Daryl knew in that moment they weren’t going to make it to the entrance of the zoo that night. They had to hide, fast, before something that could see far better than they could found them in the dark.

Without warning the archer veered off to the side, still just inside the trees, picking over the tree roots and sharp drops from creek beds trying to weave between the hills. Adrian didn’t stumble, which was good at least, and only made faint crunching sounds in the first blanket of fall leaves that coated the ground. Daryl winced with every step the young man made, but tried instead of keep a sharp ear out for what was around them. Up ahead another animal house stood dark against the bruised blue and purple sky, the last traces of sunlight straining to paint it colors that Daryl could actually see. He crept up slowly, trying to hear any sounds of breathing, shuffling, hooves or claws of padded feet – but only the crickets and cicadas echoed from the trees, some faint calls of birds, and the muffled sound of his own heartbeat thumping painfully in his chest.

With a look and a jerk of his head, they only paused for a moment to make _absolutely sure_ there was nothing lying in wait for them, and the two men rushed for the dark square figure. All lettering for what use to lay in the cages was gone, and the cages themselves were bare and empty, smelling strongly of molded straw and old meat, enough that it would mask their scent - and Daryl knew they’d be safe for the night. A side entrance door that had the faintest peeling letters that read ‘STAFF ONLY’ was hanging open, enough they could slip inside the dark cement hallway, Daryl using his shoulder and the faint traces of light from open doorways around the corner to lead them through the pitch black interior. Adrian had a hand curled into the back of Daryl’s vest, lower where it was looser around his waist and lightly off center – helping him be guided through the dark as they moved together silently. He was barely breathing as well. But they made it, peeking in an open cage door and seeing a vast rock expanse with some plant life, but mostly the faint remnants of straw and grass and overgrown trees. Random shapes that might have been toys. Daryl wasn’t sure what could have resided in the cage, but it was long abandoned, and the cage door was definitely open, confirming that someone had indeed let the animals loose when the world ended.

Needless to say, Daryl did a sweep of the enclosure – noting that there was a deep ravine and fencing in-tact, as well as high chain-link walls that were very sturdy – before promptly shutting the cage door behind them. Hearing the clink echo against the empty cement hallway.

They were safe, for the moment.

“I’ll take first watch,” Daryl told Adrian quietly, gruff and defeated, pacing for only a moment before seeing a high ledge that was _huge_ and swinging his crossbow across his back before pulling himself up on to it. There wasn’t much to see with the new moon hanging invisible in the dark night sky, but the stars were trying to give the faintest hints of shapes beyond the heavy cage fencing, and when daylight once again touched the Missouri sky it would be easier to see what all was around them. He had his back to the stone wall when he heard Adrian pull himself up beside him, a feat with his injured arm, and Daryl was once again reminded how tough this little nerd really was. The young man settled beside him, exhaustion pouring off him in waves of heat and had the hunter looking over at him sharply, the warmth was too close to what happened when one was bit by a walker.

“I think it’s infected,” Adrian mumbled, attempting to pull at the bandage wrapped around the hyena bite in his forearm and Daryl’s eyes narrowed at how the bandage was sticky with substance that was not blood. It was starting to smell, and had to be leaking puss, it was badly infected and they didn’t have anything that could fix it. No water, no clean bandages, and only their weapons on them with no light. He’d have to cut away the flesh in the morning, shred one of their shirts to rewrap it, and hope the kid was still strong enough to get back to the entrance after trying to sleep through what was either a very bad blood infection – or the infection they all feared with a vengeance.

“You’ll be alrigh’,” Daryl told him quietly, bumping their shoulders and trying to give the younger man at least a little hope, there was a chance he could lose his arm for this but he wasn’t going to tell Adrian that. “Get some sleep.” Adrian nodded tiredly, leaning his head back against the wall with his eyes closed, and Daryl sat vigil in the dark night – foreign screams and roars and cackles calling out from all around them, all edges of the zoo alive with night-time music and verbal territorial markings. It continuously sent chills up and down his spine, making him very aware of every sound he made as well, of the faint sniffling and snores as Adrian fell asleep next to him – either the infection or the cold causing him to become stuffed up and noisy as he breathed deep and slow.

It only got worse throughout the night, and Daryl kept careful track of it as the hours passed in constant noise and motion, until the faintest races of light started to streak across the sky.

\--


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you skipped to this chapter right away, this is a DOUBLE update to make up for last week, because last chapter and this one go together really well. Also, huge warnings in this one, mind the tags. I've had this scene planned since the beginning of this fic so please don't kill me for it.

\--

Early morning came slow and in gradients, lightening everything around the enclosure Daryl and Adrian had been hiding in, until the dark shapes Daryl had been trying to make out for hours bit by bit came into focus. Mostly rock expanses surround them in the caged area, like the high hiding ledge they were huddled on, the hay he had felt crunching beneath his feet littered the ground in scattered doses among the dust and debris. Leaves from the surrounding trees that made their way in that season, plastic toys and giant bottles that were also used for such bleached from months in the summer sun, and some carefully constructed long hanging trees with limbs large enough to hold a very large animal.

The trees were what stuck him the most, hit him hard as Daryl tried to remember what animals might have used this enclosure, but ultimately didn’t let it cloud his thoughts too harshly – whatever use to reside in the abandoned animal house hadn’t been back all night. So there was a good chance it wouldn’t be returning at all, nothing had even walked by on the paths surrounding the viewing areas beyond the fence.

A distressed sniff and muffled sneeze broke through the early morning quiet, louder than the birds chirping in the nearby trees, and Daryl sighed again because Adrian had been doing that all night. Sneezing, sniffling, trying to breathe through his nose – and the hunter knew that they would need to leave soon if the young man was getting that sick. His fever had faded, though, which was almost more alarming – the few times Daryl had cut a glance at the other man when he’d sneezed himself awake the kid had insisted he was fine. Looked fine except for the red eyes and shallow breathing, his body fighting the infection in his arm but still distressed by something. This time when he looked over at Adrian, who had once again woken himself from the sneeze, the day had brightened their surroundings – and something else caught Daryl’s eye. Both men were wearing darker clothes, to easier blend in with the dead landscape they usually scavenged through, and it was because of that Daryl could make out a scattering of long coarse hair all over their jackets and sleeves. He carefully picked one up to inspect it, seeing how the color changed from white to a strange light tan and then to black.

When memories once again resurfaced of seeing something similar years and years before, Daryl felt his own throat close up as he tried to swallow hard.

“Hey kid,” Daryl asked Adrian, surprised at how the breathless words were spoken – with such a careful control there was no way of mistaking how _scared_ he was in that moment. “You allergic ta cats?” Adrian’s red-rimmed eyes snapped over to him, early streaks of sunlight glinting against his glasses, and he didn’t even need to answer before Daryl was up and dragging him off the ledge, his heart stuttered to a stop in his chest. Because he’d led them into the fucking big cat house and they needed to leave – now.

The problem with cats is they are nocturnal hunters, and they always returned to the place they usually sleep at, dragging their food with them for safe keeping. That made them _very_ territorial.

And Daryl was trying very hard not to _panic_.

He hadn’t seen any animals all damn night because everything else was too smart to stay near there, and whatever _did_ live there was out hunting for its meal. The two darted across the enclosure and Adrian tried to open his mouth to ask something – what lived there, if Daryl had seen anything, were they still okay – only to breathe and cough on the air. Barely able to inhale before he was sneezing again, loudly, as Daryl unlatched the cage and broke into the cement hallway only for the sounds to echo all the way down the empty expanse. Past other empty cages, doors left wide open on the rusted bars, and in their rush to leave the house they were anything but quiet as they sprinted down the long hallway.

Adrian’s sneezing wasn’t the only sound in the hallway, a deep rumbling growl echoed as well and made the two men stop in their tracks. Daryl would never know if that was the worst mistake he could have made, or if it ultimately saved his life, because in the next moment a tiger was striding out of an open door near the end of the hall, catching sight of them and watching them with intrigue.

“Holy shit,” Adrian whimpered, and Daryl swallowed thickly but didn’t dare make a sound, unloaded crossbow in one hand and his berretta stuffed down the back of his pants burning like a brand against his skin. The weight of his hunting knife on his hip was heavy and foreboding, because the last fucking thing he wanted to do was fight a fucking tiger, but with Adrian at his back and the animal not stopping in its slow leisurely strides he knew running was _not_ going to see them through this alive.

It had to be just a few years old, 700 lbs give or take a couple dozen, with its large head reaching to about Daryl’s hip – and it was moving towards them. A force that was steady and not ceasing, but it didn’t look ravenous, or hungry, and Daryl was reminded the animal had probably been hunting all night. Was tired and well fed and in that moment looked like it didn’t know what to do with the two humans in its house. There was blood staining its giant paws and the white fur around its mouth, but the blood was fresh and must have been animal – the large cat wasn’t a scavenger like the hyenas, it probably avoided the walkers and might not have seen another human since the years before the outbreak. Deep guttural sounds echoed against the cement walls with every exhale, and Daryl was staring right into its large brown eyes, some instinctual part of him telling him to not look away. The deep throated growls were reminiscent of purrs, and for a moment – he knew they would be okay.

Risking just a moment, Daryl didn’t look away at all and used muscle memory alone to load the crossbow and draw the heavy string tight, rising it and keeping it pointed at the large animal that was stalking towards them, not stopping but not lunging at them either. His heart was about to beat out of his chest, his peripheral unable to not notice how it’s strong muscles moved beneath the vibrant patterns of fur, shoulders sloping with each powerful stride and curiosity rolling off of the young adult animal in waves. It didn’t want to kill them, yet, so before Daryl can stop himself he slowly mumbled to Adrian “we gotta distract it.”

“With _what_?” Adrian hissed at him hysterically, fingers once again clutching to the back of Daryl’s vest desperately.

“Anything,” Daryl snapped back. “It’s not gonna eat us, it already went huntin’, just gotta get past it.”

 With careful movements the young man took off his jacket and bundled it up, out stretched in his hands with the sleeves dangling enticingly, and the movements caught the tiger’s gaze. The purrs increased playfully, mouth dropping open to pant and growl and reveal long deadly teeth that were yellowed from captivity but well used, long tongue licking the stray traces of blood from the fur around its mouth. “That’s it,” Adrian almost laughed in terrified tremors, Daryl using a hand to pull him to the side of the hallway where there was an open door, creating a circular dance with the large animal to try and get it somewhere that was easily enclosed. If it got into the enclosure Daryl could lash out and shut the gate, locking it in for the time being. He was sure whoever was running the park would let it out eventually, or the large animal would get itself out somehow, but right then getting him and Adrian out of that cat house alive was all that mattered.

His spine went rigid when Daryl saw Adrian jerk the coat up and down, the animal eagerly kneading its giant paws against the ground – as if to swipe out at it like a giant cat toy – and he bit back the growl that wanted to escape his own throat.

“It ain’t a damn kitten, stop playing with it,” Daryl hissed angrily, fear doing something awful to his insides and instincts, trying to find a way to get it into the cage. “Toss the coat in there, I’ll shut the door behind it.” Adrian had been holding the tiger’s eyes like Daryl had been earlier, keeping his gaze steady and connected, but at Daryl’s words turned to look at the archer in question.

That’s where everything went wrong. The turn of his head made his peripheral useless, his hand stretched even further towards the animal, leaving a wide open opportunity for the tiger to swipe for the coat, knocking it to the ground. Adrian flew back away from the attack on instinct, the fall sending him to his knees and exposing his back to the predator. He was on its level, in its space, and it only took one second and a loud roar for the tiger to lunge forward and sink its teeth into the easiest place to reach. His head and neck.

The four inch canines pierced through his skull and spinal cord, powerful jaws snapping into place and with a sickening crunch killed Adrian in seconds – Daryl was close enough to see the blood pour from the puncture wounds and for the spark of fear to leave his wide eyes, because he had lunged forward to try and yank the kid out of the way. He hadn’t expected the first bite to kill him, for Adrian’s body to drop and become a kill that the tiger wanted to drag back to its collection of meals for later, or for the large animal to perceive Daryl’s advance as a threat to his food – for it to let go of Adrian’s lifeless body and rush for him next. He was far too close, too low to the ground, with his cross bow aimed at nothing and useless to him as the tiger swiped large paws at his crouched form.

Daryl had to fall backwards to keep the sharp claws from striking across his chest, losing his footing and landing on his back, not even able to scramble out of reach before the 700 lbs animal was over him – and the only thing keeping him from being torn to bloody ripped up shreds was his 50 lbs crossbow caught between his chest and wild animal above him. The tigers claws were sharp as shit, it dug and clawed at him as if he were buried in sand, the sharp nails slicing through clothing and skin like butter where it could reach, and Daryl barely managed to block the first large bite with the sturdy frame of his crossbow, though a swipe near his face and a scratch from those sharp teeth tore through his scalp – blood starting to pour in rivets into his eyes and ears, and beginning to pool slowly on the ground beneath their struggle.

The tiger lunged again, mouth wide open and the sounds so _loud_ all around Daryl that it rattled his teeth, this time the bite snapping the string on the crossbow, the heavy metal cord flying up and striking the animal across the face – making it rear back and giving Daryl the split second to lift his hips and reach for the gun stuffed down his jeans. But he wasn’t fast enough, he had barely gotten the gun up and fired one shot, hitting the ceiling above them instead of the enraged animal with a dangerous twisted snarl that would forever haunt his nightmares. The tiger barreled on, infuriated from the wound on its face, and Daryl was once again trapped beneath the giant animal – and this time it was crushing him. Giant paws jumping and pressing down since it could not reach him, landing on where he was using the mangled crossbow as a brace to guard his throat and lungs and heart, the force of the concentrated power so heavy and violent Daryl could _feel_ his bones snapping in his chest as the tiger’s weight broke rib after rib in painful succession. His left arm was caught between his chest and the crossbow, the pressure snapping his wrist and the metal tearing through the already open flesh on his arm from the tiger’s claws. He was going to die on that damn cement floor, the shattered bones in his chest splintering and threatening to puncture his abused lungs as he heaved for breath in panicked cries of pain and fear. With a scramble that was both desperate and fueled by adrenaline and endorphins, Daryl reached for the knife by his hip, having to reach under where the giant animal was attacking him to his left side – his left arm a mangled broken mess and still caught under his crossbow – fingertips finally able to find the hilt and slice it upwards.

The knife only hit thick fur but no skin as he dragged it across the animal’s broad chest, but the long blade struck true when he sunk all eleven inches up into the tiger’s throat, blood gushing from the wound down his arm and across his face. The tiger made a painful scream, tried to rear back only for the sharp blade to shred more of its neck, the roars and shrieks gurgling to painful whimpers as it slumped helplessly. Daryl was able to get one booted foot up to kick it off of him before it collapsed into a dead weight beside him. Still whimpering and crying and not knowing how such a thing like Daryl could hurt it so, and Daryl had only a brief spark of pity in his own pain-filled gaze before his used as much strength as he could gather to sink his knife back into it once more – this time through its skull.

Blood coated everything, both the tiger’s and Daryl’s own, with Adrian’s still pooling and flowing from his dead body a few yards away, and Daryl fell back on to the ground. Sprawled out and trying to breath normally, carefully so as not to disturb the shards of bone floating in his chest, but his own whimpers of pain echoed against the giant stone walls with every exhale. With a glance behind him he could see he was in the entrance to another cage, and without another thought bloody hands were grabbing onto the bars rooted to the ground – and he _pulled_. The sound that escaped him was all pain and rage and exertion, dragging his limp body that would not cooperate into the cage, and kicking with his last ounce of strength at the heavy metal door until it closed shut and held. He barely registered the clink of the latch, the rush of blood in his ears, and the careful return of feeling to his limbs – indicating he hadn’t broken more than his ribs and his arm, before the pain took hold so strongly that darkness swallowed him up.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the late chapter again, I got caught up finishing my final chapter for my other long fic "Southern Discomfort", and then I basically wrote this chapter into the story already written - and I'm super happy with it. I hope you all enjoy it too. Thank you so much for all the comments and kudos, they seriously make my day and help me to keep writing :) this is still unbeta'd, so all my mistakes are mine. I hope you enjoy it <3

\--

Morning came slow, creeping beyond the horizon and lighting the sky in tints – that did nothing to brighten the surrounding roads and neighborhoods Rick had been staring at all night. He packed the jeep as soon as night had fallen, prepared to go out and search for Daryl in the damn dark – but Michonne had stopped him, his other voice of reason, and told him it would do Daryl no good if Rick got lost in the barren wasteland that was the sprawling dual-metropolis of Kansas City. So he paced the fence-line, boots wearing a path in the dusty cement, keeping watch for any other animals throughout the night – but also for the lone rustic headlight and loud rumble of the custom-made motorcycle the hunter coveted so much.

As soon as he could make out the empty street beyond the theater gates, the birds barely chirping and no one else save the other people on watch awake, he went and woke Michonne and Glenn to get them ready to leave for the zoo. Carl had been up most of the night as well, soothing Judith who had been _beside_ herself that Daryl wasn’t there, so Rick wasn’t surprised when his eldest child handed off the little girl to Maggie, and then climbed in beside him in the front passenger seat. They were out of the gates before the blood red color of the sky could begin to fade to blue, radio still on and crackling ominously as Rick sped down the abandoned highway – no one had spoken much that morning. They all knew that whatever was keeping Daryl and the others from returning could not be a good thing, and the dangerous air that settled around Rick Grimes was so precarious and thick with worry that none of the other’s dared to ask him anything. 

And Rick – Rick didn’t think he’d ever forgive himself for letting Daryl go to that Godforsaken place with little to no back-up. Aaron was reliable, but the two college kids were as green as they could come, and he didn’t trust either of them further than he could throw them to have Daryl’s back in a place as hostile as the one buried in the woods of Western Missouri. 

The silence had been so heavy, so foreboding, that every single person jumped when the radio crackled loudly and a voice rang out from the other end.

“-ick, Rick come in. Does anyone hear me?”

He stopped the jeep in the middle of the damn highway, snatching it up as the vehicle skidded to a stop sideways, blocking two lanes on the empty interstate.

“Aaron?” he called, as loud as clear as he could, and waited for an answer. But when he didn’t hear anything back, he cast a glance at his son, as well as Michonne and Glenn – who had leaned forward once the car stopped – to confirm they had all heard him too. He had heard things over a phone before that hadn’t been there, a small spark of fear for the days where he only faintly grasped at reality with bloody fingers, not knowing what was real and what he had _convinced_ himself to be real. But they all looked expectant, worried, and straining to hear, so Rick hailed again. “Aaron, it’s Rick – are ya still there?”

“Thank God,” the other man sighed in relief, though his words sounded breathless, pained, and that did not help the cold fear shooting up Rick’s spine to settle heavily at the base of his skull. “Tell me you’re on your way.”

“We’re on the highway just a few miles out,” Rick answered, not wanting to admit his words shook as he spoke them. “Where’s Daryl? Did ya find the others?”

“I don’t know,” the ex-recruiter admitted, and anger set ablaze like fire in Rick’s veins.

“What do you mean _you don’t know_ ,” Rick seethed into the receiver, all patience and sense of self flying out the fucking window. “Where’s Daryl, Aaron!”

“They left me in the van last night,” Aaron tried to answer, but his phrases were beginning to slur together. “Said they’d be back before it got dark, and then they weren’t – I managed t’get into the front seat and drive up to the jeep for th’radio. I-I’m not doin’ so hot, we ran into trouble-“

Rick started up the car and handed the radio to Carl, the rage that was thrumming through him and prickling at his skin also clogging up his throat. He was about to scream down the receiver and that wasn’t going to help anything. The tires screeched in protest as he took off down the interstate once more, only passing a sign for the Kansas City Zoo a moment later as Carl tried to talk to Aaron on the other end of the radio. The frequencies were going in and out with the hills and trees, but Rick was barely listening over the pounding of his heart in his ears and the blind fear that was edged with anger – it was all consuming, and he powered it into getting that vehicle _to_ the zoo as fast as possible. His determination was so soundly set, if he could will it they would have been there _yesterday._

\--

The other jeep, a larger and more bulky build than the one Rick was driving, was parked right next to the rusted Maroon mini-van that the whole group knew as a beacon for their kids and wounded. It was up the hill, past the parking lots off to the side of the road, leaving Daryl’s motorcycle all alone at the entrance to the open gate of the zoo. It looks so daunting and small in comparison to the large iron gates, and Rick eyed it heavily as he hopped out of the car – but that didn’t stop in his momentum to get to the driver’s side of the van and yank the door open.

A lesser man would’ve recoiled at the sight, but Rick just froze for a moment, before getting an arm under Aaron’s and physically lifting him out of the car and out into the open air. His face was ashen and slicked in sweat, fever burning through him, some visible bites and scratches looking red and bordering on infection, but it was his leg that was the most obvious point on injury. Rick laid him out on the ground, the other’s gathering around and Glenn sliding his pack from his shoulders to get out the first aid that might’ve been far too many hours too late.

The bandages were made from Aaron’s old jacket, and they stuck to the infected wound and stripped skin, shredded muscle and poorly clotting blood. There was pus and an odor that was rank in a way far different from the walkers, and Rick’s face set as hard as stone – unless they got him back to their doctor at the Starlight theater, there wasn’t a chance in hell for them to save Aaron’s leg. He had a good feeling it was already lost. 

“We need to get him back,” Glenn told him, slowly and not wanting to mention it – but it was obvious Aaron was going to die if he wasn’t already halfway there. Rick nodded, but they hadn’t brought as many people as they should for this kind of situation. Glenn swallowed hard, reaching into his pack for something to try and clean the wound, to strip away the skin that was dead and rotting, and looked up to catch Rick’s eyes. “Go find Daryl, we’ll leave in Aaron’s jeep once I can move him.”

“None of us should be out here alone,” Rick told him lowly, keeping a careful eye on how Michonne and Carl had stood up and checked their surroundings periodically. 

“I won’t be for long,” Glenn reassured him. “Just do a sweep of the area before you go so I have a few minutes of not having to watch my back.”

Rick watched him carefully, looking for any sign that the young Korean man wasn’t completely confident being left alone outside the zoo.

“You’re sure-“

“We’ll be gone in 10 minutes, 15 at the max,” Glenn told him soundly, nodding at his long time friend and leader, and then making a motion with his head – his hands already preoccupied with retightening the tourniquet made with Aaron’s own belt. “Just find Daryl.” 

His heart was still beating harshly in his chest, and Rick _wanted_ to nod his head in answer, tell Glenn without a shadow of a doubt that they would find Daryl, but the daunting darkness of the zoo and everything it held weighed so heavily around all of them. Aaron wasn’t talking, was barely coherent, and had said on the radio earlier that something had happened – when speaking with Carl it was clear they had been attacked – and now looking at the shredded remain of his leg Rick was certain it had been an animal. Something with sharp teeth and the jaw strength to leave broken punctures in bone, they could see such marks through the mess of torn muscle and skin and leaking fluids. Once again Rick was submerged in the over-whelming feeling that they were in so far over their heads – an exotic place with dangers they hadn’t faced before, that had little rules and were driven by nature and instinct alone. Rick knew all too well what it was like to be driven by nature and instinct, but natural selection had equipped their opponents with claws and teeth and abilities that far surpassed their own physical limits. 

And the most daunting thought of all was that whatever lay for them inside that zoo had bested _Daryl_ , the one who was more in tune with nature than any of them combined. That scared Rick to death, for the sake of the man he loved more than he could comprehend or ever say, and also for everyone surrounding him. His _son_ , who had come with him to find Daryl without a second thought, which had made him so proud – but Jesus, what would happen to him in there? What would happen to any of them? What if they found Daryl and he wasn’t even –

“We will,” Michonne answered for Rick, standing behind him and nodding at Glenn as he began to cut away the flesh that was so inflamed Aaron didn’t even seem to feel it. That was bad. Rick rose to his feet, heaving a breath and looking over at the woman beside him when she tapped him on the arm to grab his attention. Together they did a sweep, Carl staying with Glenn while he did the most delicate part of his work, and then the three left the capable man to rewrap Aaron’s leg as they made their way down the hill towards the gates. Carl had his shotgun out, pointed at the ground but loaded and ready, Michonne’s arm bent back to steady the katana across her spine, fingers dancing on the hilt nervously as they walked in the silence that was more _loud_ that they had ever heard it. Birds and insects and the faint morning calls deep in the heart of the zoo – far beyond the trees and buildings – of things that sounded far too strange for Rick to ever pin-point. His red handled machete, and colt python rested heavily on either side of his hips, both within easy reach, and also ready for whatever was on the other side of the gates.

The entrance was both dark and bright, stark lines of black wrought-iron that had rusted through the elements in the past few years, left open enough for each person to slide through, with only Daryl’s motorcycle standing vigil in front of it. He wouldn’t have just left it out in the open like that if he hadn’t planned on being _right back_ , and that tightened the mess of anger and hate and worry that was cinched in Rick’s chest – making it hard to breath, hurt with every harsh beat of his heart, and held his spine straight and his head up and alert. A deadly combination that made him both precise in his observations, and more desperate to find the other man. 

He couldn’t help but hear faint echoes of a lifetime ago, walking through the seemingly abandoned streets of Terminus, the calls of “Ringleader, Archer, Samurai, and Kid”. The four horsemen to that facility’s looming apocalypse, their demise had been set when Rick and his group had walked through their doors – he wasn’t as confident now, not with that same looming feeling of being _hunted_ weighing heavily on his mind as they carefully made their way through the split concrete of the courtyard. But also because they were missing their archer, and it drove every step forward that Rick took into the one place he would have never entered. There were very few things that would drive him to that form of madness, and his love for his own was one of them. Nothing in the world could have stopped him from searching for the hunter, not even his own instincts screaming at him to run the other way.

“Dad,” Carl said beside him, quiet and breathless, and Rick only glanced at his son for a split-second – taking in the wide eyes and the raising of his weapon – before his gaze snapped to where he was looking. Down the wide concrete paths, overgrown with vegetation, and far down the other side of the courtyard, something was ambling towards them slowly.

And it wasn’t a walker.

It was large, and black in color, hulking and making the most jagged and fumbling steps towards them. Standing out so stark Rick couldn’t help the spike in his heartbeat, at being so alone and then suddenly having a creature _there_ in front of them, no fences to separate them this time. The drag of each foot and arm was reminiscent of a walker, which had Rick’s shoulders in a tense line so strong it was knotting the muscle beneath his skin. He grabbed for his Colt on instinct, clicking back the hammer and aiming without even thinking about it, and watched as the figure came into view and his breath was stolen from his lungs.

It was a damn primate – a gorilla to be exact, he knew that much – thick muscular arms looking intimidating strong, like they could break bones as if they were tooth picks. As it moved towards them in slow motions, the sun glinting of the black and silver fur painting its back, Rick knew he had to shoot it. And that he’d only have one shot, maybe two. He’d gotten a walker between the eyes at that distance before, so he wasn’t sure what was making him hesitate in that moment.

“Dad,” Carl said again, but this time he sounded more scared. The teenager’s eyes were better than Rick’s, so he saw what Rick’s mind was refusing to let him see until the creature had gotten a little closer. His gun was up and ready, aiming for the strange shape of its skull and dark, sunken-in eyes, but that was when he saw his target was much smaller than it probably should have been. Because it’s entire lower jaw was missing. 

_“Dad,”_ Carl hissed at him, looking at him frantically as Rick’s wide blue eyes tried to process what he was seeing. It only took that note of panic from his son for the Rick’s hand to steady, for the dead primate to shoot forward into a flat-out run, and for Rick to pull the trigger with a practiced hand and motion.

The shot should have been hard because the gorilla’s skull wasn’t shaped like a humans, and with half its jaw missing it would be far easier to miss, but the animal running at them like a freight train was only going to be taken down by a headshot. And Rick’s aim was true, the bullet hitting home and exploding out the back of its head, heavy arms failing and the creature collapsing in the middle of the courtyard into a mess of long limbs and black hair.

Birds shot from the trees and animals called in reply to the loud gunshot, Rick knew better than to use a gun in the middle of a quiet place like the one they were in, but the panic had blinded him and probably saved them from a fight they wouldn’t have won. His brain wasn’t catching up to what he had seen, though Michonne and Carl hadn’t moved from where they had been standing either. Rick wasn’t entirely sure time hadn’t stopped.

Because in that moment, Rick was so afraid, and he hadn’t been _that_ afraid in years. The fear of the dead, of the virus that ran through every single person on the planet, that had a set of rules and predictions that were burned into his instincts like a brand that he would never forget. And one that had always stayed solid and unmoving was _the virus didn’t affect animals._ So was this a freak accident? Because it was a primate and so close to the human genetic make-up that the dead creatures had begun to rise as well? Or because the virus was mutating?

No matter what, everything was about to change, and the dark zoo they were about to search through with a fine-toothed comb held a new sense of danger. One Rick wasn’t sure he could take in stride, as he had done the past few years, not when his whole world had just been rocked to its core. 

\--


	13. Chapter 13

It had been a long time since Daryl had passed out after taking a beating, and it was not something he had ever hoped to feel again. That tiger hit a lot harder than his Pa use to, though, and for that he supposed he would let the resentment slide. Consciousness came and went slowly, lazily like the sun appearing and disappearing behind clouds in an open sky, and every time it did pain would register as heavily as weights in different areas of his body. Sunken into his flesh and bones and pinning him to the cold cement floor. 

It sucked how much he realized he couldn’t just shake this off, force himself to sit up and get on with everything, he’d done it before – he knew he had. The few times he’d crashed his bike over the years, the loud sound of metal on asphalt calling walkers for miles, encouraging him to get to his feet and to a safe vantage point. Or the time he’d fallen again and again in the ravine on the Greene farm – with an arrow in his side, no less. Daryl was just as stubborn as he used to be back then, come hell or high water he was getting out of that damn cell, or he’d die trying. Maybe he’d lost a bit of the fire that use to tear through him constantly, fueled by flashes of pain and anger and bitter memories, but the drive he’d always kept kindled in his chest to _survive_ wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Especially now, when he had a family that was waiting for him to come home – something he’d never had before with how he’d grown up. Something he’d gotten to taste and savor right before it got ripped away from them at the Prison and Alexandria, the only places he’d ever felt proud enough to call home. Now he had found it in a person, in a group of people that were more like blood than his kin ever was, and that was something worth fighting for.

No one was going to find him there inside the dark recesses of the cat house. Even though Rick was going to gather a search party and had probably already left, might even be at the zoo already, but Daryl didn’t want him setting foot in this place. They shouldn’t have stayed as long as they had, he and the others that had ventured inside. And now Daryl was the only one left in this fucking death trap, the human amidst the animals. _“You’re gonna be the last man standing.”_ Beth’s words filtered to him from nowhere, echoing in his skull and making his stomach lurch as a tidal wave of memories that followed it. The kind smile, the reminder of family, the blunt and honest truth he’d been denying for so long in those days after the prison fell. A light in the dark, before it was too stolen away from this shit world that surrounded them. _“You’re gonna miss me so bad when I’m gone.”_ Fuck he did miss her, they all did, had shed many tears over another piece of their family that this dead world had swallowed up and eaten whole. They’d lost so many already, he wasn’t going to be another person to add to that last, another name pained on the wall. He refused to let that happen.

 _“Ya better do somethin’ then_ ,” came the echoing taunts the Daryl hadn’t heard in _ages_ , and his heart started to beat so hard in his chest it hurt and ricochet through the broken bones. _“Ya found yerself another hole ta die in, baby brother? Just keep on comin’ back to’it, don’cha - we gotta stop meetin’ like this.”_ Daryl fought with every ounce of strength to open his eyes, because even if it was another hallucination he’d give _anything_ to see his brother’s ugly smirking face again. _“Ugly? Words hurt ya know, see if I ever help yer sorry ass outta the dirt.”_

Daryl’s eyes were bloodshot, not from exhaustion or even the pain, they were probably bleary and soaked in red tints with burst blood vessels everywhere – because he hadn’t been able to _breathe_ when the giant cat had been bearing down on his chest. He’d been choked out a few times in his life, some closer calls than others, so he knew what lack of oxygen did to a person. Knew what it felt like – and though his eyes were open he hadn’t fully registered what was going on with the rest of his body. But then he realized his brother wasn’t standing over him like before, smirking and telling him he was going to die lying there in the dirt. All he could see was the same cracked ceiling that he’d been looking at off and on for hours. And then ceiling moved, jerked one direction and back again – or it looked that way, until he felt the scratch of the floor moving beneath him. 

_“That ain’t me tuggin’ on yer boots, Darylina.”_

It hadn’t been the last time either.

Flashes of the walker that had been chewing through the thick leather of his work boots back on the farm came to him faster than his actual vision, and despite the screaming protest of his wounds he scrambled back. Getting at least up onto his arms to maneuver himself backwards – or one arm, the other gave way and the splintering pain reminded him it was either fractured or fucking _broken_ – but the only word blinking through his mind like a neon sign was “WALKER”. 

There was movement in two separate places, and Daryl’s clouded thoughts of pain and panic had difficulty registering them at the same time. Something moved by the cage door, which was no longer _closed_ , tall and human like and Daryl just kept thinking _walker, walker, WALKER_ and then focused on the thing that had ceased tugging on his boots and his brain stuttered to a stop.

Okay he was hallucinating.

He scrambled back further, which only seems to upset the animal more – judging by the grunts and sounds it made like it was trying to tell him its displeasure – which Daryl couldn’t give two _shits_ about whatever was making it angry because it was a goddamn monkey or something and it was _scowling_ at him. And he didn’t know if it was going to poke at him, eat him, or bash his head in with a rock so Daryl did the only thing he could do and that was kick out at it on reflex like he’d done with the walker years ago. The wounds in his chest hurt like a _bitch_ , rearing up to assault his senses and nerve endings with a vengeance now that he was conscious, making his breathing desperate and high, wet sounding with each drag of oxygen into his lungs – and he feared that he might be drowning in his own blood. 

The damn thing screeched at him, thumping his leg as he kicked as if to chastise him, and _fuck_ that set the limb on fire as the rough treatment landed right on where the tiger’s claws had torn through clothing and skin alike. Daryl couldn’t hold back the cry of pain, or the growl as he began to scream back at it, “GET OFF’A ME!” Doubling over in pain and still trying to draw away, and then there was a fucking monkey screaming at him and he _knew_ he was screaming back and this was the most ridiculous moment of his life but he was in _pain_ and he just wanted it all to stop. “FUCKIN’ MONKEY, JUS’ LEAVE ME ALONE!”

“She’s a chimp.”

The voice was smooth, no accent, and made the monkey stop screaming in his face – head whipping around to look at the source. Daryl did the same after a moment’s hesitation, taking too long to see whoever turned away from the cage door and disappeared down the dark hall out of his sight. And his brain was barely functioning because – there had been a person, that had talked to him, and they had keys to the doors.

“Hey,” Daryl called after him, weakly at first – too stunned by another’s presence that didn’t have sharp teeth and thick fur, but he tried again immediately after. “HEY!” the hunter tried to get to his feet, hissing with pain at the agony that tore through his broken ribs and chest and muscles all therein. “HEY, COME BACK HERE!” But only silence came from the empty hallway. “ _Fuck_ ,” Daryl cursed through clenched teeth, only on his single hand and knees with the other arm cradled to his chest, spitting the rancid taste in his mouth from the blood earlier on to the ground. “Come back here you asshole,” he said a little louder more to make himself feel better.

A grunt and chitter next to him reminded him he wasn’t alone, slanted eyes meeting the still slightly angry face of the chimp that was watching him struggle to stand up like it was judging him. “Wasn’ talkin’ to you!” he snapped at it, and it was almost comical how the frown on the animal’s strikingly human face deepened even further. He’d never seen a monkey up close, and decided he could’ve lived his entire life without having that experience under his belt. “Don’cha got bananas ta eat or somethin’?” he growled out, making a pained gasp as he finally got his feet under him and had himself upright, using that to put more distance between him and the primate. 

Making it to the cage door, he leaned against it and looked down the hallway to find it just as empty as Daryl thought it would be – though he knew he hadn’t imagined the person that had spoken to him. There was someone here, living with the animals, interacting with them – which was _insane_ by the way, _fuck_ this guy – but he’d come to check on Daryl, seen if he was still alive, but hadn’t interacted with _him_ in any way other than that. And that was shady as fuck, Daryl’s curiosity only went as far as vaguely wondering about the man’s motives until he decided he didn’t care to stick around and figure it out. He wanted out of the damn zoo, wanted to get back to Rick, and Carl and Judi, wanted to lay down and have Carol stitch him up and then sleep for a fucking week. 

But getting out of the zoo was first priority.

It was a struggle to lean down and get his broken crossbow, an endurance trial that Daryl didn’t plan on repeating with his hunting knife still buried in the dead tiger’s skull. He wasn’t out of weapons, he still had another blade in his boot if it came to it, but all his others were useless – an empty gun, a mangled crossbow, and a hunting knife he had to leave behind. Things weren’t looking promising, especially with how much effort it was taking to breathe correctly, to hold his arm to his chest when his shoulders were screaming at him. And the tacky feeling of dried blood stuck to his face and neck making itself known with every small movement. 

He was ready to start move out, until he looked up and – okay, the fucking monkey sitting there judging him with a scowl was starting to get really creepy. Was it _guarding_ him? Or keeping guard? “What’cha lookin’ at, Donkey Kong?” he grumbled out, knowing there was a flying-monkey joke to be made here but too aggravated by his whole situation to piece it together. “Ya know the way out ‘r are ya just gonna stare at me?” It huffed at him in a way that was all too familiar, looking away as if bored, making Daryl scowl in turn. Fine, he was losing his damn mind already talking to a fucking monkey, probably had a concussion too.

Fate smiled on him in that moment, because if he hadn’t been so exasperated at trying to communicate with the chimp, Daryl probably would have limped out into the hallway to face whatever suddenly let out a growl that echoed down the hallway. The deep base the reverberated through his torn chest sent a type of panic Daryl wasn’t entirely ready to deal with, his wounds too fresh and the loud echo of the tiger still ringing in his ears. The way the primate’s head snapped over to the sound let him know the hungry growl wasn’t just in his head, watching as the chimp moved swiftly and quietly down to the bottom of the enclosure – away from the source of whatever was coming after them. Or after Daryl, anyway, he was the only one still steadily bleeding.

Very carefully, Daryl close the cage door until it locked with a faint clink of metal, and started making his way after where the chimp had disappeared too – there really wasn’t much else he could do in that moment, except trust that this animal would know how to get past whatever else lived in the cat house. He was still disoriented, in a lot of pain, and probably leaking his wounds all over the floor – but Daryl had no chance of finding another exit on his own, he wouldn’t be able to notice any other dangers until it was growling in his face. Or chewing on it. 

So his best chance - was to follow the damn monkey.

Fuck his life.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay again, it's been a rough couple weeks. Unbeta'd and stuff so I apologize if I missed any typos.

\--

The interior of the zoo didn’t look like every other abandoned block since the world had ended, that stopped as soon as Rick and Carl and Michonne left the courtyard entrance. The wild had taken back everything beyond that point. It was an entirely different world that they were venturing into, and the differences were hard to adjust to as they moved quietly and swiftly through the carefully laid out facility. There was the obvious lack of the dead all around them, first of all, though the continuously rotting body of the primate that charged them had shaken the small group to the core. But the key component that changed everything was how _alive_ the world felt around them – in comparison to the dead wasteland that the towns and cities had been reduced to. There were many moving presences within the trees, war cries and callings from across the park, and a terrifying juxtaposition to the entire zoo being completely empty, and at the same time _not at all_. They didn’t see another soul in the area, caught only the faint traces of just having missed something out of the corner of their eye, feeling eyes that were aware instead of dead and lifeless following their every move. Wary, hungry, observing or territorial, the danger of the situation was becoming more real with every step. Rick would not tell his son or Michonne that he was well aware how out of his depth he was, or the anxiety that ate away at his chest for not only their safety – but for Daryl’s as well. He could in no way predict how the day was going to turn out, or who they would be bringing back to camp with them. For all they knew everyone was dead. 

But he still led the way with his Colt Python loaded and pointed at the ground, his pace slow and cautious as he double-checked every turn and step after the scare with the gorilla at the entrance. And rightfully so, they still didn’t understand what happened, just that things were different here and all the rules had changed, it was hard to adapt after such a shock like that one. But Rick wasn’t going to lose his head, not when Daryl was somewhere in the park and they didn’t know if he was okay, alive or dead or injured and immobile, and they also didn’t know what else was there with them. What might be watching them, because Rick felt like they were being watched, couldn’t shake it no matter how far they walked down the path with no clue as to where they were going.

The downside to the situation was neither the Grimes men nor Michonne knew how to track across concrete like Daryl could, so they had no trail to follow through the zoo, though the redneck had tried repeatedly to teach their leader and other members of their group the skill. Those outings with just Rick and Daryl usually ended one of two ways, one was with walkers interrupting their hunt and cutting it short before anything could be taught, and the other ending was not productive to teaching Rick how to track in the _slightest_. But was still very time consuming. Michonne knew a little, Carl next to none, in fact the only person who had successfully apprenticed for Daryl in the way of tracking was Judi. The little one could find a snow bunny in a blizzard. But without her there, Rick did his best to lead the way on intuition alone – if Daryl was near the entrance, where the service trucks were supposed to be, he’s have made it back. Even if he was gravely injured he would’ve _crawled_ with no legs to his bike if he had to, the man was nothing but stubborn. So he had to be deep in the park, had searched for the others and ran into trouble, just as Rick had feared. Even if he found the others, the fact there were no traces of another person in shoe-prints or bullet shells or anything of the sort led Rick to believe there weren’t many survivors left to find. 

They went straight forward into the heart of the park, the courtyard having various different paths leading in different directions to areas labeled by continent to indicate the animals found there. Or had been found there, they could be anywhere by then – years after the outbreak. The large building they circled around to go that direction was a giant glass enclosure, interior colors of cold grey stone and faint pictures of ice bergs along the information panels, water all but evaporated in what was once a very deep pool. His eyes traced everything inside and out, looking for breaks in the fencing, knowing whatever was inside must have been big, and past the sun-bleached blend of plastic and glass he was able to make out a form slumped against the side of the far wall. Carl veered off to investigate, shotgun out and pointed at what was probably the equivalent of bulletproof glass, and Rick couldn’t help following after him upon reflex. 

He wished he hadn’t.

The animal was dead, mere white fur tattered and left exposed to the elements, but still clinging to a giant skeleton that the exhibit named a polar bear. The fur was tinted rust brown that matched what was imbedded in the angry spider-web cracks on the enclosure. It had fought ferociously to get out, killed itself smashing into the clear walls, out of hunger or fear or rage. Even the toughest and most dangerous animals couldn’t survive the end of the world it seemed, and Rick swallowed hard imagining what monsters had actually _succeeded_ if something like a polar bear could not. He nodded away from the cage, Carl following his lead as they solemnly joined Michonne on their trek deep inside the deserted zoo. 

They passed many exhibits that were similar, a giant pool with grime filled water in the base barely a few inches thick, with a faint tint to the air of rotting fish, the legless skeletons inside showing the sea lions left to die inside the deep cement enclosure. Not one person dared to make a sound as they wandered through the vacant paths, over grown with foliage and leaves and dirt, each turn showing just one more expanse of what was turning into an animal graveyard. Rick even began to think that maybe all the animals were dead, and the only creatures that had survived left the zoo in search of food and shelter beyond the park’s fences. Maybe the zoo really was abandoned. 

“Rick,” Michonne spoke sharp and quiet, one hand still on the katana that she had moved to her side when they passed the front gates earlier, easier to access and grasp in preparation for anything that might have jumped at them. She know held on to the hilt tightly, muscles in her exposed arms tense as she nodded towards the path ahead of them. There was blood, fresh and bright against the debris on the cement pathways leading toward a grouping of houses. The signs pointing that direction said ‘Large Cat House’, and Rick’s jaw set tight as he recalled what started all of this in the first place. The giant paw print Daryl had found in the woods, the massacre of the deer he had been tracking, how _scared_ Daryl had been of that print pressed into the mud – how Rick hadn’t listened to his worries. And here they were, that blood could be Daryl’s, something could’ve grabbed him and drug him into the house. 

He might not even be alive.

“It could be Daryl’s,” Carl pointed out, as his father hesitated to move towards the dark building down the hill. Rick nodded, breathing deep through his nose and settling back into the mindset that had gotten him through the past few years. Protect your own, fight to the last breath, and don’t give up on your family. He needed to find Daryl, before he lost his damn mind in the darkness beneath the trees, and this was the only lead they had found in hours. 

“Only one way to find out,” Rick answered Carl quietly, giving him what he hoped was a strong look, before leading the way towards the house. The blood was thicker the closer they got, and that struck Rick as odd making him slow near the door – Rick didn’t know shit about tracking, but he knew how things died. How they bled, how they survived, and the initial impact would have the heaviest amount of blood flow, the further Daryl moved the less he would bleed unless it continued to tear into him. So either he was so severely injured there would be nothing Rick could do – and that made his heart seize in his chest, push him to go towards the slightly ajar door in search of the man he cared for with every fiber of his being – or Daryl hadn’t been dragged into the house. He had escaped it.

And whatever he escaped could still be inside. 

Holding up a hand to halt the other two, Rick pushed open the door slowly with his hand, the gun raised and pointed into the darkened hallway. The blood was everywhere here, all over the floor down the hall, drag marks and splatters and lines of movement – whatever fight happened here had been brutal – and then he saw the body on the ground at the end of the hall. Motionless and practically blending into the floor. Rick was running before he could stop himself. 

“Dad!” Carl called after him, following but actually checking their surroundings, unlike Rick who had eyes only for the dead body on the floor. It wasn’t breathing and its skull looked crushed, and at 15 feet away in the dark Rick could finally make out the slight build, the thin shoulders and matted blonde hair that belonged to one of the college kids. Dead and mauled by large puncture wounds – bite marks – and not the ones he was used to seeing. Something had practically torn his head off, sunk it’s fangs into his skull and crushed his neck at the same time. “Dad it’s not him.”

“I know,” Rick didn’t even recognize his own voice, couldn’t tell if he was breathing or if his heart had started to beat so hard it hurt against his rib cage. But he scanned the area, numb now that he knew it wasn’t Daryl, and froze at the same time his son did. Because the blood continued to trail and drag into an open cage door. Some of the smears were the size of dinner plates, shaped like the paw prints of the giant tiger that was also laying motionless on the floor. And it had a knife in its skull, a knife Rick knew all too well. 

He slowly approached the animal, aware it was dead but some primal part of his brain aired on the side of caution anyway, crouching down to see it’s torn throat, the slice across its face, the blood soaked into its orange and white fur. The exotic stripes still so striking and thrilling to see, though it was hard to tell if it was a good or bad feeling, Rick had never been this close to an animal so large and powerful before, his instincts calling him and giving him razor focus as he observed the scene as best he could. But there was no other way to look at it – Daryl had fought off a fucking tiger, and lived. Killed it even. 

As horrified as Rick was at the whole situation, he couldn’t help but be impressed. 

“Only Daryl,” he muttered under his breath, hearing Michonne scoff, looking up to catch her exasperated mix or worry and resignation. Daryl had walked out after that fight, to hole up somewhere and lick his wounds that were obviously still bleeding – and all they could do was try and follow him. 

“He really killed it?” Carl asked in awe, watching as his father grabbed the hilt of the hunting knife Daryl had owned since before the world had ended, and yanked it from the dead animal on the cement floor. 

“Looks that way,” Rick told him, wiping the congealed blood on his pants and sliding it between his belt loops to hold until they found the archer. Because they _were_ going to find him. “He got out, we need to head after him, before something else comes back.”

“Blood is still tacky,” Michonne told him, poking at the pool with the tip of her boot. “Can’t have gone far.”

“He’d go patch himself up, right?” Carl observed, picking up a few bloodied arrows that were unused – the smears on the sides showing they had fallen off the crossbow. “First aid station?”

“Or a veterinary building, there has to be something somewhere,” Rick agreed, not able to look at the bright green and yellow feathers tinged rust red. Carl held on to them, picking up every one before the three exited the building. Not sure where the faint trail of blood would lead them, or for how long, but the vice that had been closed on Rick’s chest lessened just the smallest amount knowing Daryl was still alive and fighting. If there was one thing he could always count on in the dead world they lived in, it was Daryl – no matter what he did, he always made it back to them. To him.

Rick just prayed Daryl would still be in one piece when he did.


	15. Chapter 15

Climbing out of the tiger enclosure had been a _bitch_.

Damn monkey almost ditched him as Daryl struggled to climb through the broken wire fencing that looked far too much like bolt cutters had been used on it, leaving a bad taste in his mouth. Along with the blood that still stained his teeth. Using the strap from his mangled crossbow, he settled his broken arm between his chest and the worn leather – tying it to the strap with his red shop rag around his wrist – to keep it in place as he tried to escape the cat house. But even his good arm and strong legs weren’t enough to make it remotely easy on him, as he tried to make it through the opening that was no bigger than a few feet wide, not with the broken ribs in his chest making his breathing shallow and entire torso stiff. He could barely bend down to crawl through, having to fall to his knees and maneuver through the jagged black fencing carefully and quietly. Huffing breath through his nose – but never too deep. The broken ribs in his chest could be sharp breaks, floating bone that was just waiting to puncture a lung at any wrong twitch of his body, and there was no way for him to tell the extent of damage on his own.

But he made it, pulled himself back to his feet while trying to keep his chest as straight as possible – which wasn’t hard with the pain and stiffness – and kept close to the side of the building as he followed the path he thought the primate had taken. Whichever way it went was probably his safest bet.

The walk through the zoo was quiet, nerve-wracking, Daryl’s heart working over-time and thumping loudly in his ears as it pumped blood to every place that was injured on his body. The wound on his head had finally stopped bleeding after about a quarter mile, the fresh air letting it clot on its own so he would stop leaving a trail behind him. The entire walk he had felt it dripping down his scalp, warm and wet and mixing with sweat, _fuck_ this sucked. The tiger had hit him like a battering ram, his whole body felt broken and splintered, and the endorphins were wearing off fast the longer he walked. Dizzy in the autumn sunshine, despite how many times he shook his head and tried to refocus on the paths around him. The trees moving wildly and loudly with the breeze, drowning out any chance of hearing the other creatures that might be lurking in the depths of the forest. Or hunting.

He didn’t except to see the damn monkey – chimp, whatever it was – again, but sure enough walking around a bend it was at the top of the hill fucking watching him. Waiting, like it’s time was damn _precious_ and it was pissed off Daryl was hobbling so slow. He really wasn’t moving that badly now that he got his limbs moving, his body buzzing with the last residual effects of trying to control the pain. So he did _not_ want to deal with this shit, ain’t fucking Lassie – Timmy ain’t down the well – Daryl was just broken as fuck and needed _pain meds_. And a decent chest wrap, bandages, water, food – shit to help him get the hell out of the zoo and back home.

Wherever that might be now.

When Daryl reached the top of the hill the path was empty, nothing but a fork in the road with trees on either side, and faded wooden sign with arrows pointing to ‘Africa’ and ‘Australia’, with a few little symbols meaning restrooms and places to buy over-priced junk food. As well as a picture of a phone, a present (gift shops might have something to help), and a red cross.

He must have had a concussion too, because the hunter blinked at it for a few minutes before realizing what it was. There was a damn first aid station.

“Huh.”

Fucking animal had been useful after all, it had lit out like a bat outta hell once Daryl was at the sign, but at least now he knew where he was going.

The path sloped down and around another bend, steep in its incline and Daryl knew his footfalls were heavier and louder than they should be – his exhausted body not able to control both his limbs and his sense of depth perception or gravity. It followed around an exhibit with no name and nothing in it, that did not bode well for Daryl’s hope he wouldn’t come across something, so he skirted it as quickly as he could – not giving anything a chance to see if he was worth the trouble. He spotted the row of buildings at the top of yet another hill – _fuck_ Kansas, or Missouri, wherever the hell he was – that reeked of fertilizer from the rotted food that has wasted away within, and they looked to be abandoned enough. The building on the end had the big red cross sign indicating his one hope for making it out alive, and not a moment too soon. The redneck’s vision had begun to go blurry the more he climbed the steep pathways. The years of smoking cigarettes were not helping his shallow breathing, which was so hard to control, but he’d binged watched too many late night medical TV shows growing up to not know what happens when a lung collapses and you don’t have something to re-inflate it. Daryl did not feel like stabbing himself in the chest with a pen today. He didn’t even have a pen.

The door wasn’t locked, a small blessing since Daryl wouldn’t have been able to break down the door or jimmy the lock with his knife one-handed and dizzy, but it was dark and dusty and the sudden urge to cough tightened his lungs and chest to the point of extreme pain. He couldn’t cough, he could bust another rib, or tear a lung open on the splintered bones – Daryl covered his nose and mouth with the back of his sleeve, swallowing hard to clear anything in his throat, and squinted into the dingy recesses of the medical building.

Everything was a mess, but not in the way like it had been gone through and torn apart, more like people had left in a hurry and didn’t come back to straighten it up. Daryl stumbled more than he would have liked to admit down the dark tile hallways, losing his sense of equilibrium and falling into the wall shoulder first, his breathing more haggard the longer he took to move. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew it was the pain, his body couldn’t handle it like he was trying to force it to, he needed to bind himself up and take some _really_ good pain meds before he went into shock. The first room he came to was locked, as was the second, but the room at the end of the hall had the door wide open and bright, pouring sunshine from a window into the small exam space.

Pain meds first – he knew that was needed, and the drawers heeded almost nothing but the supplies he’d need to bandage himself. _Fuck_ he just needed to think straight, and fucking Advil wasn’t going to do the trick, even the new wave of endorphins his body was pumping into his bloodstream wasn’t going to help if he didn’t find something. Though at this point he’d just take some alcohol to numb the nerve endings, desperate times were something Daryl was all too familiar with – as well as dealing with enormous amounts of pain. Enormous amounts of pain for extended periods of time, in a zoo full of things that might eat him, when he couldn’t defend himself; that was a different story entirely.

There were syringes in a locked drawer, Daryl found after he had yanked so hard he risked dislocating his wrist, but they all had names on them he could barely read. Jumbles of letters that looked like gibberish to him, but one _had_ to be pain medication. He read through each one trying to wrack his brain for anything that Hershel, Bob, or Denise might have spoken of that would relieve the pain enough for him to fix himself. But nothing was standing out, there were some bottles of pills at the back with antibiotics and other prescriptions that had people’s names on them, Daryl not even taking a moment to wonder why they were there in the first place – too dazed and distracted to think about _who_ might have put them there or why. Because the last bottle read a medication whose name he was _all_ too familiar with.

Dihydrocodine.

Thank you _Jesus_.

It was probably the first and only time Daryl was fucking grateful to Merle’s damn drug addiction.

Dry swallowing two pills and pocketing the rest, Daryl wasted no time in digging through the bandages for gauze, athletic tape, and sighing in relief when he found a compression wrap that just _might_ fit his chest. It ended up being a tight squeeze and took some contortions the redneck was happy no one was around to see – but he had shed his jacket, vest, and shirt, and somehow managed to get the wrap around his upper abdomen and chest. It wouldn’t go any higher because he was too broad, and it made it a little harder to breathe, but if his ribs were in pieces it would help keep everything in place. The drugs started to kick in and turn his mind to a pleasant single-minded state just in time for the hunter to splint his broken arm – which _burned_ and hurt so damn bad – and them make a contraption out of his button down and some straps from the exam room to make a sling. Completing that, and clearing the dried blood on his head and face, Daryl had time to let his mind wander as the drugs alleviated the worst of it all – and all he could think about was Rick.

Rick was probably in the zoo somewhere.

There was no way he wasn’t, there wasn’t a doubt in Daryl’s mind. That man wouldn’t just sit around and wait for his sorry ass – even though Daryl had told him he’d be right back – he probably brought others with him too. Daryl didn’t want _one_ of them in that zoo, within the high gates and walls of trees, and everything that could be awaiting therein – and he knew that escaping now wasn’t just a matter of making it back to the entrance in one piece. It was making sure that Rick wasn’t still stuck in here when he did. He wasn’t going to leave without the other man in his sights, no matter what it took.

But at this rate – ‘no matter what it took’ might actually kill him.

_Fuck_.

Daryl sat on the exam table, back to the wall and slumped, resting his exhausted limbs and his mind fizzling out to the far corners he usually didn’t touch. The ones that focused on feelings and specifics that had been put on hold for so long, because there was always a _reason_ that now wasn’t the right time – when in reality there would never be a right time. Because they were traveling and it was too dangerous to let go of their worries or let their guard down, because they were inexperienced and weren’t ready to face whatever Rick and Daryl shared that bound them together so strongly, because Daryl was so scared to exam it one day – name it for what it was – and have it all ripped away from him the next.

Because he loved Rick Grimes.

Fuck, he loved him – and didn’t know what to do with that besides what he’d already been doing for years. He’d given everything he had, as little as it was, to the man way back at the beginning. After the farm burned down, on the long road during the winter, inside the prison walls that had become _home_ to them. And every day since.

He just sucked at showing it.

There was only one person in his life that he ever wanted to be close to, that he reached out for and wanted to keep pressed against him, melded together because it felt _safe_ instead of suffocating. Made him feel stronger, and less alone, gave him reassurance that everything was real and solid and not going anywhere. It’s why Daryl had started reaching for Rick, let the man pat him on the back to start, press shoulder to shoulder on watch and at dinner, until that invasion of personal space became something he craved. Starved for without knowing. He became addicted to everything about Rick Grimes, and hadn’t known what it meant until years later, after almost losing him over and over again.

Now, the only thing really holding Daryl back was himself, his own confusion and expectations that he didn’t even know the specifics of. And besides, there was so much more to deal with than his and Rick’s libido, so many other things to keep track of and protect – like Carl and Judi. Christ he loved those kids, he loved their father, he loved his whole damn family and like _hell_ he was going to die in this shit whole excuse for a jungle in the middle of nowhere.

He might not be able to trust anything enough to let go, to let himself settle down until they had four walls and a guarded gate once more, and maybe not even then. But Daryl was fucking _sick_ and tired of being so damn worried about the dead and rotting world surrounding them, that what little time he had was being _wasted_ and not given – at least a little bit –  to the person who deserved it the most. He could fucking die tomorrow, hell he could die tonight just bleeding into his chest and lungs, but he vowed silently that he wasn’t going to let all the crap they’d been dealing with stop him anymore. He’d show Rick, at least once, how much he loved him – even if it was the last damn thing he ever did.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lateness, it's been a trying few weeks - work has been kicking my ass, and my husband just swore in to the Air Force so that's been a trial preparing him and stuff - but my plan is to finish this fic out this month. I think we got about 5 chapters left (this one included) so my goal is to update every Wednesday. With only 4 chapters left I think I can stick to the schedule this time. Thank you all for your patience and support, it mean the world to me. <3

\--

They lost the damn trail.

The bright red droplets that sunk into the path of cement and dust and dried leaves thinned out bit by bit – as Rick, Michonne, and Carl followed the spots of blood left like scattered breadcrumbs through the deserted zoo. Until they were so far spaced that no matter how far Rick ran ahead, head down and dissecting every inch of the walkways, there was nothing left to be found.

“Damnit!” Rick seethed, running his hands through his hair in frustration, pacing rapidly as he tried to figure out which way to go. Continue deeper into the heart of the park? Or backtrack and take another path? Which way would the hunter have gone?

“Rick,” Michonne cut through his angry thoughts, catching his eye far down a different path and jerking her head towards it. “This way.” She must have found something resembling a trail, Rick was on her heels as soon as she took off in the adjacent direction Rick had been going, leading them down a steep path and around a bend leading towards a section marked off ‘Africa’. Even if he hadn’t been able to read the faded wooden signs, the giant elephant tusks sticking out of the ground near the entrance would have been a dead give-away.

What had the trio slowing down, Carl in particular, to inch towards the exhibit bordering the entrance to the continental area, was the splintered and scattered fencing and wooden logs as big around as the tires on Rick’s jeep. Broken and fractured like toothpicks, strewn around and discarded like a child’s building blocks, indicating what had been inside the enclosure had broken through with little to no trouble – trampling everything in its path. It was hard to imagine creatures as large as vehicles and just as powerful barreling through the forest surrounding them, and Rick quickly shoved all thoughts and images of what a rampaging elephant could do to the back of his mind, erring on the side of caution and leading his son and right-hand (next to Daryl, of course) through the debris carefully and continuing around the exhibit. On towards some straw-hut buildings, with skeletons of the giant African Elephants on display as a part of the exhibit years and years ago. Carl’s eyes kept straying to it curiously as they used the hut to survey their surroundings for a moment before continuing on, and Rick’s heart hurt unexpectedly at the sight. Carl would have loved this zoo when he was younger, they didn’t have any large ones such as this back where they lived in Kentucky, everything was too far away from King County – though he and Lori had tried to take their son out to as many little attractions as they possibly could. There were very few things in this dead, rotting world that reminded Rick of what life had been like before it all went to hell – and even fewer that made him mourn it. That part of him died a long time ago, road worn and weary of any comforts he hadn’t made with his own two hands and tested for weaknesses in every possible way he could think of. And even then, it was still hard to let go.

“This place is cool,” Carl muttered quietly, taking in all the pictures and faded paragraphs of facts and information. “Too bad everything is trying to eat us.” Rick couldn’t help the small grin that spread across his face, wide enough to show teeth, ducking his head down and shaking it in exasperation. Michonne must have given the teenager a look because Rick heard a defensive “what?” from behind him as he went back to looking around. There was an abandoned watering hole and viewing area, and what looked like buildings around a bend, they could duck through what remained of the over-hangings for cover, and hopefully there would be a medical building around somewhere – some place that Daryl might have gone to patch himself up.

“C’mon you two,” Rick told the duo behind him, who had quietly started bickering in hushed tones – an attempt to lighten the heavy mood at least a little bit and keep them moving and sharp. Rick didn’t function like that, he needed his anger, his worry, to help him keep focused and closely set to the task at hand. Finding Daryl, and getting everyone out alive.

Taking the lead once more, Rick ducked around the bend and under the viewing area hangings covered in layers of dead leaves and fallen branches from the surrounding trees, over grown with vines and grass and bits of the over-flowing forest trickling in. There was a skeleton in this area too, but it was not one placed there by the Zoo.

And neither was the one next to it.

Or the one after that.

“Dad?” Rick was walking right past all of them, barley looking at the giant skeletons lain across the ground in various states of final rest, stark white bones picked clean by the elements and scavengers alike. He knew what an elephant graveyard looked like, hell Carl should too with how many times he watched _The Lion King_ over and over again when he was small, and they were already taking too much time navigating through the area. Michonne must have said something to his son again, and Rick was suddenly struck with an enormous amount of gratitude that the woman had come with them; Rick knew he was beginning to become reckless in his search for the redneck. Was getting tunnel vision, and he needed to be more aware – of not only his surroundings, but his son as well. He stopped in his tracks until the two were beside him, and turned to them vigilantly.

“We can’t linger too long,” Rick explained as carefully as he could, trying to keep his concern-stricken madness at bay, “not only because Daryl’s hurt, but we don’t know what’s out there. Something could be following us, and we can’t give it a change to catch up if it is.” Carl nodded in understanding, eyes hardening in a way Rick recognized all too well – because he had seen it in himself for years – and nodded to his Father in agreement. Rick was as proud as he was dismayed in that moment, that his son could handle any situation thrown at him, but one day would ultimately turn into a man much like his father. Rick had always wanted something better for his children, as all parents did, but in the dead desolate world they had barely survived through the past few years – there really wasn’t much room for hope.

His only comfort resided in that Carl would be alright, no matter what happened from here on out. In some ways he had a better chance than any of them.

The three made their way through the rest of Africa, the left over buildings and exhibits just as trampled as the entrance to it, broken fencing and broken walls scattered like dominos across the winding pavement and unkempt grass. They picked through the debris carefully, more trying to keep their presence unknown than following any kind of trail – the only visible areas to walk were what was best for a direction Daryl might have gone in. Michonne shifted their walking order so she was leading, keeping a sharp eye ahead and around as Rick and Carl focused on quieting their footsteps and staying hidden from anything that might still be in the area. Which was probably why Carl was once again the first to notice the expanse to their left, stopping long enough to gain his father’s attention.

It felt like something out of a movie, the sight beside them, and it took Michonne doubling back to stand next the Grimes men before she too looked out over the vista beyond a deep incline and drop that kept them separated from the numerous animals milling about. There must have been a hundred of them, at least – surrounding the giant man-made watering hole, and sifting through the grassy plains that were still growing wild and freely between the scattered trees. Each species akin to what should be on the African Savannah, from the striped zebras and hulking water buffalo, to the tall giraffes and the elephants wading through the water’s edge. There were animals Rick couldn’t name to save his life, birds, all in groupings of herds that mingled and went about their day in the late autumn sun – completely unaware of the three standing their gaping at the sight.

Rick shook himself out of it first, nudging Michonne and wordlessly nodding that they should keep moving – not wanting to draw any attention to themselves – but it took physically dragging Carl away from the viewing area. All but asking for “just 5 more minutes”, as he made a few quiet protests until Michonne had him by the arm and pulled him behind her.

\--

After wandering the steep paths that dipped up and down hills in curving patterns, feeling like they were walking in circles, a large atrium came sprawling into view. Thick chain-link fencing barring them from cutting through the areas surrounding it, and Rick could see concrete parking lots with abandoned vehicles sitting in them looking very little worse for wear. He didn’t know he was smiling until Michonne huffed a laugh at his expression, catching his attention for only a short moment – it looked like their luck was turning around.

The fencing and concrete walls herded them towards the entrance of the atrium, the sign long since gone about what climate or habitats were located inside, but at that point in time all Rick really needed  was to find a side entrance door to the vehicles.

“Dad, look!” Carl said a little too loudly, and Rick whipped around – expecting the worst – spotting his son pointing above the atrium. He must have looked ridiculous spinning in a circle like that, whipping around again to follow Carl’s line of sight, but what he spotted made him stop caring about any of that. Past the atrium they could see the top of a hill where the trees parted due to a steep ravine, and there was a line of buildings all joined together like a strip mall at the end of that path.

And one had a giant red cross that was weather-worn and beginning to fade, but couldn’t be mistaken for anything else.

“He must be there,” Carl told him, having come up next to his father, and all Rick could do was nod definitively.

“Let’s go.”

The caged in area was padlocked, woven chains thick and sturdy and haphazard in a way that did not speak of the neat park that had been run before the world ended. It stalled Rick’s actions for a second, pulling at the chains and noticing how they barely clang together they were bound so tight, the fencing creating more noise as it rattled with the movement. The chains weren’t going to budge, they’d have to climb over. Rick threaded his fingers through the chain links, securing a boot tip through one as well, and prepared to haul himself up and over when something large and heavy and smelling of death hit the fence as hard as a battering ram.

Rick flew backward, Colt Python pulled and aimed before he could register the shing of a sword being drawn or the click of Carl’s double barrel loaded and pointed in the same direction – or before he could register what was on the other side of the fence. Ugly snout pressed against the links, teeth bared, spots – again – and a hunched form that matched the cackle it let out, mirrored by three others that yipped and barked and fucking _laughed_ on the other side of the fence.

Hyenas.

They pushed at the fences more to make noise and intimidate than to break through, as if they were focusing on making noise, and Rick’s head tilted to the side in curiosity and apprehension when the thought struck him. They were calling for something, they were smart, they reeked like walkers and were very much _alive_ , and Rick’s heart beat started to pound in his chest as every self-preservating bone in his body was telling him to _get out_. And get out _now._

He backed away, jerking his head in the direction of the atrium and having Michonne and Carl follow him toward the second set of padlocked doors. These weren’t chained as tight as the fence had been, and the lock had rusted to brittle red remains of what it once was – a few hard knocks with a stone released the lock and they were ripping away the chains to throw open the doors. Until they were thrown open for them.

This was a smell Rick was familiar with, pungent and dusty and rotting and _sick_ , it hung in the air over the prison the entire time his family had lived there, from the masses of bodies that always milled around outside the gates. Five had broken through the doors once they were open, and Rick’s body and instincts went on autopilot as he and Carl and Michonne took care of the situation that they could have handled in their sleep. He and Carl shutting the doors, and holding it while trying to rethread the chains through the door handles, while Michonne quickly and efficiently sliced each skull of the screeching and growling corpses that reached for them with clawed hands and barred teeth. It was so second nature, so instinctual, that it allowed the terror to settle into Rick’s mind as his eyes darted over to the small pack of hyenas (two more having joined the original three)  that were still laughing and shaking the fences and had set a fucking _trap._ Just to watch them die.

They needed to get out of the fucking zoo.

“This isn’t going to hold!” Carl said harshly, breaking Rick out of his trance-like state, looking down to see he had wrapped the chains as many times as physically possible, and as tight as he could get them, but having nothing to hold the chains together – just his own weight holding the doors shut. They needed a metal pipe, a piece of ledge-ing, _something_.

Michonne appeared with a branch that was thick but couldn’t be thick enough for what they needed. “That’s not going to last long,” Rick huffed out, the walkers on the other side of the door pushing so hard he had to dig his boots into the concrete and strain to keep the doors shut so the chains didn’t unravel.

“Long enough,” the woman told him lowly, weaving the branch through a few links of the chains and then stepping back to unsheathe her katana once more – nodding at Rick when she was ready, in case it didn’t work. Rick and Carl sprung from the doors, automatically pulling weapons and waiting all of 5 seconds. The door held, and that was all they needed for the trio to dart the other way, the cackling of the hyenas at their backs. They ran towards the other side of the atrium and over a crumbled pile of cement and broken trees. It looked like one of the building had caved in, singed timber and plywood showing a fire had broken out – it could have been arson or lightning or the damn wrath of God, but the three kept moving. Not wanting to test their luck with how long they had before however many walkers were inside the atrium broke free and followed them.

\--

They could hear the door break open, the chains clanking against the cement as they climbed through the broken remains of the collapsed building – the piles and chunks of foundation and what use to be walls would be enough to keep the walkers at bay if they could get over it fast enough. They barely made it before they were spotted by the small hoard that spilled out into the open area like water from a broken damn, the cheers and barks of the exotic animals behind the fence a chorus of happiness and Rick could practically picture them salivating. He wasn’t sure how the pack came to be so smart, why they had done what they did beyond creating a huge food source that they could feast on for weeks, because the cruelty of the deadly trick was something so insanely _human_ that there was no way the animals should have been able to plant it.

Was it possible they set the trap?

Or did they just know about it?

Something cold and angry and fearful all at once set like a match inside Rick’s chest, burned at his insides and throat and made rage boil beneath his skin, all fueled by the idea that they weren’t alone in the zoo. Someone else was here, playing games, playing God, there was another human being living amongst the animals and if Rick wasn’t in such a hurry to find Daryl and _get them the hell out_ he’d make sure to plan a visit – to stop in and say hello before leaving. He was fucking friendly like that.

They made it to the back entrance of the atrium, large glass windows green with algae and hot humidity – but also showing the bodies melded to it, pawing at it and trying to claw their way through to their meal just out of reach. There were dozens, by the looks of it, and Rick normally wouldn’t give it a second thought. But with how few walkers were around, it was a curious thing, finding them all in one place. Were they there from the beginning of the outbreak? Was someone collecting them? There was no way one person was doing that, so they must be a keepsake from when the world ended years ago. It was a storage container – a food supply.

“Someone else is here,” Rick said finally, catching Michonne’s gaze and finding a look that said she had already guessed that. “Keeping the animals alive, feeding them the walkers.”

“Why?” Carl asked.

“I don’t know,” Rick admitted. “And I don’t want to find out, let’s find Daryl.”

“That’s going to be a problem,” Michonne said quietly, a tone to her words that showed she almost didn’t want to say anything in the first place. They couldn’t see the small row of buildings anymore, and had no way of knowing where they were located except beyond the area behind the atrium, where they were now standing. The paths led in three different directions, and they knew from traveling through the park that the road that appeared went one way didn’t always go where you thought it did, and they were losing daylight. They couldn’t afford to be wrong, especially if Daryl was hurt – or dead.

The splintered remains of the signs they had seen all over the damn park were lain in a scattered heap across the pavement, smashed and broken and arrows pointing nowhere, showing symbols for phones and restrooms and food. And a little red cross, dirt stained and faded, with the arrow pointing at the sky.

Rick wasn’t sure he was breathing.  

Defeat was something he had dealt with a few times before, but it hadn’t tasted like this in a long time – like ash in his mouth, sour and harsh and thick as tar. They couldn’t give up, they had nowhere else to go, but they had lost all sense of a trail for the hunter, they had no way of knowing where he could be. He could be bleeding out, missing limbs, out of bullets and arrows and lost – which was terrifying all in itself because the prospect of Daryl being _lost_ just sucked all hope from Rick’s veins.

They were trapped in this zoo, with all sorts of creatures around them – just waiting for a chance to sink their teeth in – and walkers at their backs. There was no good direction, there was no plan, just find Daryl and get him home. In whatever state that may be when they found him.

And try to stay alive in the process. If only the park would stop attacking them at every turn. It all felt futile, and hopelessness was spreading like poison into every inch of him.

The despair was as catching as the madness.

“RICK!”


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So excited for this chapter, and I hope you all will be too :) just a heads up tho, THIS IS NOT THE END, y'all can thank the RWG for convincing me to not leave this in a cliffhanger and actually having a heart for a moment. But I've got about three chapters left (I think). I hope you all enjoy it <3 Thank you so much for all the lovely comments and support, I'll be replying to them soon

\--

He honestly thought he was hallucinating at first.

The cackling giggles and yips of the hyenas reached Daryl’s ears before anything else, he must have dozed off sitting on the exam table because he sat straight up in alarm. Quickly taking note of the dull buzz to his limbs, indication that the pain meds were in full effect and he would barely be able to feel his feet standing up, but he also knew he needed to move. There was no way to tell how close or what direction that pack was going if they were picking through the area, though Daryl could hear them loud and clear sitting beside the large windows still pouring in sunlight. They were built into the wall, not able to be opened except for the smaller sectioning at the very top of the frame – no wider than a foot or two.

Some primal instinct hit him that being trapped in a room with small windows he couldn’t climb out of even if he was at full strength was not where he wanted to be, and it felt as if the large African animals were already wandering the halls – which was why he thought he had been hallucinating. Even through the pain Daryl _knew_ he had locked that door behind him, his rationalization had left him for a split second until he saw movement through the glass. The pack could be seen outside the window, flying past the medical building and heading down the hill towards something. There probably wasn’t much that would draw their attention like that, unless it had to deal with food or –

Daryl was up and off the table and leaving the building before he could even finish his thought. Something new and unsuspecting in the park would have the pack salivating, like new humans entering their territory, unaware of what the large dogs were capable of and might fall for their tricks. Someone who might underestimate their tactics.

Someone like Rick.

It took him a few yards to get the hang of walking again, everything was sore and stiff but the combination of the pain meds and adrenaline from his worry drove Daryl forward. Limping down the hallway, and rearming himself with a few tools from around the office: a scalpel, the leg of a metal table, and he probably downed that water bottle faster than he should have – but it gave him the energy and reassurance to break out into the late afternoon sunlight. Just beginning to tinge the world warm shades of orange, hot sun still sitting fat and round in the sky towards the West.

The sounds of the pack were further North, down a different hill from where he came earlier that morning, and Daryl could make out a large sprawling building with high glass domes next to a few burned buildings, the char marks on the stone sides indicating lightning rather than someone setting them on fire. He could make out the small spotted figures of the pack ducking under a hole in the fence and weaving through a parking lot of cars, all the way to the other side that was just out of sight. Someone was drawing them there, and it could be Rick, or it could be Clara and the others that Daryl had suspected were dead, or it could be whoever was in charge of all this. Either way, Daryl was going to end up going down there - and his hazy thoughts weren’t quite in the right order yet to figure out if that was a good idea or not.

As quietly as he could, the hunter made his way down towards the groupings of buildings, keeping to the paths but hugging the tree line just in case he needed to dart out of sight. His left arm was still useless, and though he had a hell of a right hook and a weapon to swing – there was still a very slim chance of Daryl winning another round with an exotic animal.

The cackling was louder as he approached, and what he thought to be the hard knocking sounds of boots on the stone walkways, or he could have been imagining it. Just wishful thinking, his head was still pounding in time with his heartbeat so there was no way he could pick up those faint sounds, he must have imagined that he heard multiple steps up ahead, but Daryl defiantly knew he heard concrete on concrete as pieces of brick fell and things were shifted out of the way. And then there it was – the faint shuffle and groan of walkers that had Daryl’s steps slowing to a stop, familiar in a way that was disappointing and still relaxed his shoulders. Like hell he was going to deal with walkers on top of everything else, but at least it was something he knew well and could handle. Fuck they must have been holed up in the building, and the hyenas just caught wind of it and ran straight to their new food source for the next week. That was all they were excited about, there was no one else there.

He paused on the path, out of sight of the building in case the hyenas were circling it now, and tried to collect his thoughts. Remember where the entrance was, which direction he could at least head in – and hoped to reach the jeep that still housed Aaron, if the man was still alive. It had been almost over a day since he and Adrian had left the recruiter locked inside the vehicle, he hadn’t been in good shape when Daryl had last seen him – though the hunter had faith in his friend that he would fight through whatever was thrown at him. He was a survivor like everyone else, like Daryl – who needed to get back home to his family. If only he could get past the pack of hyenas.

And then the voices started.

So faint they couldn’t be in his head, familiar tempers and tones of people he knew and listened to everyday. But not of the deceased people that had been helping him get back on his feet. A thick Southern drawl, a low female bass, a fucking teenager whose voice had just stopped cracking.

“RICK!”

Daryl didn’t know when he had started moving, but he had made it to the end of the path where the cement walk-way opened up to a vast courtyard behind the sprawling building. A pile of timber at his feet for what must have been another sign with directions on the paths, but all he could focus on was the three standing there and hoping to God he wasn’t seeing things.

Carl spoke first, “Holy shit, Daryl!” his eyes were wide and lightly horrified, and Daryl knew he looked a mess – covered in blood and exhausted with his arm in a sling – but Rick’s blue eyes were trained on him and they were moving towards each other again. “Are you okay!?”

He was now.

Rick slowed his pace when he reached the hunter, injuries glaring and looking like he was one good shove from falling over – but Daryl didn’t stop. Not until he grabbed Rick by the back of the neck and pulled him flush against him, kissing him hard and determined in front of God and everyone. Rick’s rough graying beard caught with his own blood-stained scruff, but Daryl didn’t fucking care and after about 2 seconds – Rick didn’t either. Daryl was kissing him for all he was worth, and Rick grabbed hold of Daryl’s waist and the side of his face and _held on._ Just so he could feel the hunter _alive_ and pressed against him, close as they could get through their thick winter clothing.

Daryl kissed Rick until his abused lungs started to protest, and though he panted for air when he finally tore himself away, he didn’t let go of Rick. Who was _fine_ , unharmed and only lightly coated in dust and ash from the building they had climbed through to get there.

Even after all this time, it still did something funny to Daryl’s heartbeat when he realized that, no matter what, Rick would always come back for him. Always.

There was dried blood all over Daryl’s face in cracking, rust-red rivets that trailed from beneath his long hair. It was matted to the strands as well, in his scruff and unkept facial fair, Rick’s eyes tracing the powdered remains that were stuck to the hunter’s skin down his neck and collarbones to his arms where the clothing was ripped in what could only be clawmarks to mar the skin beneath. He hadn’t even known he was tracing every limb with his hands, his touch following where his eyes were trying to take in injuries until Daryl grabbed his wrist with his one good hand – Christ his _good hand_. The ripped cloth and blood stains are all he can look at besides the relieved look in his partner’s pale blue eyes, and Rick knew in that moment Daryl was only relieved because none of them were hurt like he was.

“Are you bit?” Rick can’t help but ask, scared to let the three words past his lips, but he had to. Because Daryl was littered in wounds and bandages, and he had limped over to them – Rick couldn’t have missed it no matter how distracted he was to find the redneck alive. He had half ran, half limped, and he was cradling his arm to his chest in a makeshift sling that looked to be created from some miscellaneous medical supplies and his red shop rag. He must have used it to not only support what had to be a broken arm, but also protect broken ribs, he was holding himself too carefully for anything else. And in that moment Rick was scared, because what if Daryl had been bitten, beaten to this bloody pulp and finally in Rick’s arms again and there was _nothing they could do to save him._

“’m fine,” Daryl murmured quietly to him, still pressed close, not leaving more than 6 inches of space between them. And that scared Rick too, because Daryl had never been so tactile out in the open like this before, so focused on Rick and nothing else – like nothing else mattered. Rick also couldn’t help the huff that might have been a laugh because Daryl was _anything_ but fine. The hunter all but rolled his eyes, “it ain’t walker bites.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Rick breathed shakily, terror and hysteria bleeding through his words. “I shot a damn gorilla near the entrance that had already turned. It was _rotting_ , Daryl,” and that caught the other’s attention, eyes wide and staring into Rick’s. And Rick could see now how his pupils were as small as pin pricks, he must have found something for the pain, the endless sea of pale blue so easy to get lost in if they weren’t in such a bad situation. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but we need to get out of this place.” Daryl gave a short nod in agreement, looking ready to pull away and make his way through the zoo like he’d be _leading_ them, and Rick couldn’t help how much that made his heart swell with pride that his redneck would always be ready to do whatever was needed no matter what. But Rick held fast, holding Daryl tight until he looked back at Rick in confusion. “Just please tell me, nothing like that bit you.”

“No,” Daryl said firmly, clearly, so Michonne and Carl could hear too – though they were trying their hardest to look like they were not paying attention. “Tiger,” he answered instead gruffly. Because of course, Rick had known that, he even shook his head and finally let the hunter lean back a little, put the tiniest bit of space between them – but not much.

“A fucking tiger, I saw it,” he told his friend, bright eyes alight with incredulousness and thinly veiled pride. That look lasted a beat too long, and Rick really wanted to kiss him again – instead he took hold of the back of Daryl’s neck, and leaned against him until their foreheads touched, breath fanning over his face as he Daryl let him and supported him even though he was the one that was injured. “You never cease to amaze me.” Rick wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep from reaching out and holding on to the hunter somewhere the remainder of the trip, or the rest of the way home. Or for the next two weeks. Because Daryl was alive, and here, breathing the same air he was, trembling a little and injured far beyond what Rick was about to ask of him – but he had the man he loved beside him once more, and together they had gotten through situations like this. He wasn’t sure if there had been a worse one, possibly Terminus, but they could swap stories once they were home and safe back with the camp.

He felt Daryl shift his feet, a nervous tick he shouldn’t have been able to do in his current state, but it meant he wanted to say something. Rick leaned back, catching Daryl’s eyes again – their gateway, how they first started communicating without the need for words or arguments – and he watched Daryl get stuck on the first word even after he opened his mouth. Like he wanted to say something, and got distracted, unsure, but even all his second guessing couldn’t stop the recognition Rick had in that moment. He could see what Daryl wanted to say, he said it every day without using any words at all – the way he looked after Carl and Judith like they were his own (because they _were_ his own), how he stood by Rick’s side but told him the truth no matter how much Rick didn’t want to hear it, how he always had Rick’s back and could be counted on for anything, how he went out of his way for the group and the family he had found and come to love all on his own, and how he had come to trust himself enough to return the glances Rick had so desperately been sending him for months. It was always plain as day on his face, Daryl seemed to be the only one that didn’t realize that - and in that moment it was shining deep in his gaze as he stared back at Rick.

“I love you too,” Rick told him, quiet and real and smiling softly.

It was one of the few times that Daryl tried to smile back, few and rare as they were, but it was also one of the first were he succeeded. The smallest upturn of lips, unpracticed and awkward and _happy_ , and that made it perfect.

“Are you two done yet?” Carl finally asked, earning him a glare from Michonne and a glance from his father and Daryl. “Daryl I’m glad you’re alright, but we kinda need to go.” The walkers were pushing at the doors to the atrium, that were starting to give and shake with creaking sounds that were far too ominous.

“Yeah,” Rick agreed, Daryl nodding as well. “Let’s go home.”


	18. Chapter 18

\--

The sounds of splintering wood and the final give of the atrium doors opened the floodgates of groans and growls as walkers spilled into the courtyard, and as the group scrambled back out of the way one thing became very painfully clear.

Daryl couldn’t run.

And his crossbow was a torn up mess that was useless, no string to draw and no arrows to unleash, only large bite marks left as a reminder of what had happened. He’d used most of his weapons fighting off the tiger, and though the long piece of square metal that looked like it came off an exam table could do damage with his good arm swinging, it wouldn’t last long when he was basically one large bruise. His movements were stiff, pained for the hunter, although he hid it well since Rick seemed to be the only one to really notice – but it made him swallow hard. He pulled his spare pistol from the back of his jeans and handed it to Daryl, along with his hunting knife he’d retrieved from the tiger’s skull, rearming him and giving him a fighting chance while they scanned the area for places to escape to.

They started to back up, ready to make a break through the woods and back the way Daryl had come before, already taking out the walkers closest to them as the hoard closed in faster than a lot of the corpses they encountered in recent weeks. But then walkers from the front of the atrium started to flank them as they broke through the crumbled remains of the side buildings, drawn by the hungry screams of the new walkers and the gunfire. There was no way of knowing what _else_ was being drawn towards all the noise as the sun started to color the sky dangerously, oranges and reds beginning to paint the far corners in the late afternoon light. If night fell then the group was fucked, there was nowhere close for them to hide.

They began to take out the herd of walkers one at a time, switching to hand-to-hand combat despite Daryl’s injuries – the hunter using his good arm to take rotten heads clean off shoulders, avoiding the splatter as best he could and his wounds reopening with his harsh movements – but before they could get their bearings they were cornered near the far wall. Being driven towards the chain-link fences that housed the graveyard of abandoned vehicles.

Where the hyenas were waiting on the other side, laughing and cackling and snapping their teeth at the metal linking.

They were trapped.

The group condensed into the fight pattern that won them the prison, backs to each other and weapons out, and Rick didn’t mention Daryl’s bad shoulder periodically bumping into his – re-righting himself without saying a word and making sure he was staying upright and alert. They had been in worse situations, Rick was sure, caged in and outnumbered and someone hurt, but at that point everything was coming to a fight-or-die pinpoint. And Rick would be damned if anyone else died in that fucking zoo, he just wasn’t sure how to get them out.

“STOP,” a voice called from above them, all four whipping around to a speakerphone high up on the corner of the building. “PRESS AGAINST THE WALL!” It demanded, the voice loud and unemotional with an authoritative tone that even shut up the cackling of the hyenas. Without asking a second time, a buzzer rang out across the park – reminding Rick of the prison yard – quickly grabbing Daryl and Carl’s arms, pulling them back along with Michonne until all had their backs pressed to the wall. The fencing opened like a prison cage, sliding along electronically and removing the only thing separating them from the pack, left gaping wide and allowing the animals to reach their food.

The pack fanned out, four immediately taking down the nearest corpses and sinking their teeth in happily, but a few looked to the humans splayed like a meat market counter for manager’s special. One snapped it’s jaws at Michonne’s ankles and the woman kicked it in the snout, the animal snarling and baring it’s sharp teeth. But a sharp whistle pierced the air, and it didn’t come from the speaker. Rick knew that for sure. Suddenly the whole pack was on the walkers, ripping and tearing and incapacitating them quickly and efficiently – but messy and gory, all grizzled rotting meat and congealed blood, with screams and growls echoing off the cement walls as the walkers tried to take a chunk out of the hyenas as well.

Daryl pulled at Rick’s arm, the first to have snapped out of whatever daze they group fell into at the sight of the carnage, and nodded towards the open caging now abandoned. Cars sitting in lines collecting dust just beyond that.

\--

Once again leading the way, Daryl managed to maneuver through the graveyard of cars, and after visiting a few in hopes of commandeering one – hope started to fade fast with each discovery of flat and missing tires. Engines ripped from beneath the hoods, steering wheels missing, every single vehicle had _something_ wrong with it, and the whole thing was bringing them closer to insanity. Who would _do_ this? And why? It was as if they had been cannibalized for something else, something that wasn’t there to use. After the first handful of cars proved to not function in the slightest, the hunter gave up and made for the forest once again. This time taking a route that was in the right direction of the entrance, but led them down a path none of them had taken. To a section of the zoo that was uncharted.

The afternoon burned away quickly as the group ran for the entrance, hoping to avoid any other encounter with the animals that inhabited the park, and took each winding pathway without letting up pace. Daryl still led the way the whole time, focused on Rick at his back, Michonne and Carl right behind them, and making sure the sun stayed on his shoulder. He was going to get them out, and he wasn’t going to stop until he did.

Or so he thought.

Something sharp and painful shot through Daryl’s chest right as they passed another set of abandoned houses, which smelt more strongly of rot and hay and heat than any other corner of the zoo. He couldn’t breathe, doubled over and almost fell on his face at the abrupt stop, stumbling and scraping palms and knees on the rough concrete. “Daryl!” Rick was at his side in an instant, doubling back and immediately hauling Daryl to his feet, but the hunter was still curled inward on his chest and broken arm, haggard breaths sounding wet and heavy – pained in a way even Daryl Dixon couldn’t hide. “What happened? What hurts?” Rick demanded, focused and worried and scared in a way that could have sounded detached if any of them didn’t know better. Daryl beat against his chest – to alleviate the pain, to indicate where it was resonating from, and to possibly dislodge whatever might be tearing through his lungs – but Rick’s hand grabbed his wrist to cease it, Daryl’s narrowed glare snapping to him in return. Angry and scared, like an animal caught in a trap.

“Can’ – breathe!” he tried to rasp out, panic setting in to replace the oxygen he couldn’t grasp.

“Hittin’ your chest isn’t going to help!” Rick said loud and firm. “You’re gonna rip your lungs apart.” He didn’t say what they were all thinking, as Michonne got in their space too and helped Daryl back to the ground, making sure the hunter didn’t curl back in on himself. If one of the broken ribs punctured a lung there would be nothing they could do, no one to repair it, and as much as Rick tried to keep his head in the right place his worry was starting to cloud everything like a fog. And all he could see was the pain on Daryl’s face with each attempt to draw breath. “Can you do anythang?”

“I’ve got nothing to help him, we have to get him somewhere we can scavenge,” Michonne told him, pressing at certain places on Daryl’s chest and abdomen and raising an eyebrow at the firm material underneath. “Did you wrap your chest?” Daryl nodded, mouth open and panting in pain, sitting on the ground making the sharp searing pain even more apparent – but the woman holding on to him didn’t let him lay down to straighten his torso. Instead she pushed his jacket off his shoulders, and flipped open a switchblade with deft fingers, pushing his shirt up enough to show the binding. “You’re crushing everything in your chest, it’s good to hold the ribs but not if you’re running around,” she scolded, and cut away the wrap as quick as she could, exposing the black and blue bruising littering Daryl’s already scarred chest. The entirety of his upper torso one giant array of dark color, and the rest smattering like ink stains on cloth, bleeding into each other grotesquely.

“Jesus,” Rick’s hands were immediately in his hair, tugging on the curls and choking on air, not even bothering to ignore the burn behind his eyes. How was Daryl even _moving_. “Why didn’t you say somethang?” he demanded, anger and tears making the blue in his eyes stand out brightly, but Michonne’s glare cut off his frantic words. “We need to get him inside, Carl you find whatever ‘Chone needs.” His son nodded, having been deathly silent as he watched the two adults fret over Daryl and the damage that had been done to hunter.

“Dad,” Carl said gravely as they got Daryl back to his feet. “Is he going to make it?” It wasn’t a childish question, it was a kind one – because the reality was that if they hadn’t run into Daryl when they did then the hunter would not have made it out of the zoo alive, and now there was a chance he wouldn’t make it even after they escaped.

“Yes,” Rick said with as much defiance as he could. “Yes he is.”

\--

It was the primate house.

The buildings that they entered, Michonne and Rick both holding Daryl up because he could barely drag his feet, and Carl in front with his gun out and pointed in each direction while he swept the area. If the maddening fear and worry hadn’t taken hold of him before, it did when he saw the pictures on the walls of the interior viewing area. When he saw the thick plains of glass that were completely fogged over and covered with dust and vegetation, when he could smell something that triggered memories from years ago at other zoos – other parks – and then he could hear sounds beyond the glass. Movement, grunts, life beyond the obscured view, and he only gave it a parting thought as to why any animals would still want to live in their enclosures. What might keep them there. But then all he was focused on was Daryl, as he and Michonne laid the hunter out on one of the benches so he was stretched flat, and could breathe just a little easier.

Michonne was talking to his son in hushed tones, and the two had left in search for something to re-inflate the lung, letting the two men have time alone. Rick was on his knees beside Daryl before they had left the room, fingers pushing his matted hair out of his face, taking in the bloodshot pale blue eyes and the ragged breaths – before going through the rest of his injuries. Logging each bruise and swollen area on his limbs and torso in his mind, adding them up and barely imagining the amount of pain the other must be in. “What’d you find? For the pain?”

“Hydros,” Daryl rasped, coughing and his whole body seizing up stiffly in protest. “Found ‘em in the clinic.”

“They had hydros at a first aid clinc?” Rick asked in disbelief.

“In a lock’d drawer, som’one put ‘em there,” Daryl managed to answer before he collapsed into another fit of coughs that didn’t stop for several minutes.

“Stop talking,” Rick told him, as solid and soothing as he could, demanding but also so breakable. Because Daryl hadn’t looked away from his face since they laid him down, and that fucking scared Rick. Daryl wouldn’t say anything if it was getting worse, unless he thought they could help him. And if the hunter had given up hope then what was Rick supposed to do. “You’ll be alright, we’re gonna fix you up.” Daryl didn’t answer, just kept staring at his face. “And we’re going to get out of here, we got to make it to Colorado before winter sets in. I’ve only been there once but Carol says once we hit October or November the snow will block the roads and-“

Daryl had grabbed his hand, Rick didn’t know they’d been shaking and tracing over the places on Daryl’s chest as if he could feel out the broken ribs. He had basic emergency medic training from the sheriff’s department, a whole class he took a lifetime ago, but Rick was kidding himself if he thought he could manage to find the broken ribs in the state he was in. No matter how calm he looked. Rick could always keep it together in times of crisis, be the level head that no one else can seem to hold on to, make a plan and lead the way – so why was he a mess now? When the man he loved needed him the most. “Sorry, did I hurt you?” he must have been pressing too hard, shit what was _wrong_ with him.

But Daryl shook his head, his fingers had threaded with Rick’s, and he said a low and quiet “No,” and didn’t elaborate further. Rick couldn’t even describe the fear that clawed through his chest at the one word, the steady look, the silence that followed.

Swallowing hard, Rick held on tight to Daryl’s hand, and told his as firm and true as he could. “You’re going to be alright.”

The pity in Daryl’s pained gaze hurt more than the gunshots to the chest he took all those years ago. What started everything.

What had ultimately led him to that moment.

Michonne had to pry his hand away when they returned, push him back and ask Carl to help hold the hunter down because Rick was gone. Watching the scene as if he was outside his body, unable to process anything except that Daryl had already accepted what Rick refused to believe.

Both were lost to what the zoo had done to them.

Madness had finally won.


	19. Chapter 19

\--

Daryl managed to not scream when Michonne stabbed him in the chest.

With a pen.

How she knew which ribs to go between, and how deep she had to go before quickly replacing the pen with a hollowed out one instead like she was Indiana Jones, was just another mystery to add on to the fucking pile. Michonne was an enigma, with a wealth of random knowledge that made it impossible to pin point who she was before the world ended, but at that point Daryl was just grateful to whatever training she may have had in the past. The relief he felt at being able to breathe, his chest filled swiftly and air flowing, battled the intrusion of something sticking out of his body and his first instinct to rip it out. Luckily he couldn’t feel it very well, but the pain meds were going to start wearing off soon.

“Better?” Michonne asked, and Daryl nodded and breathed as deep as he could, still tight and pained but the oxygen helped ease the animal panic at being laid down and cut into. He tried to turn his head to look at Rick, who had checked the fuck out for a minute there, and had seemed to snap back at the sight of Daryl’s blood all over Michonne’s hands. But it was Carl that got everyone’s attention.

“Now what?” The teenager asked, looking to Michonne, to his father, and really Daryl was wondering the same thing. He could breathe now, great, fantastic – but now he had a clear fucking plastic pen sticking out of his chest and even the thought of sitting up sounded excruciating. He wasn’t going to be able to move, to walk, what the hell were they going to do? Carry him on a fucking stretcher? No, fuck that.

“We can stay here ‘til morning,” Rick said after a moment of silence. “Go get the jeep, drive up here and then drive right out. Zoo is near abandon’d during the day.” Daryl’s heart hammered in his chest and it made the skin around the pen start to throb in time painfully, over his dead body were they staying another night in the zoo.

“No,” Daryl told him, louder and more defiant than he probably should be able to sound, “Y’all need to get out. Sun goes down an’ we won’t make it.” Rick’s eyes had snapped to his, head tilted with the motion, and the glare forming on his stunned expression was not something Daryl wanted to deal with. “Ya know ’m right, Rick I can’t fuckin’ _walk_ -“

“I’m not leaving you here.” Rick spoke the words like they were gospel, and they echoed around the empty room and off the glass walls, the only thing able to cut through the finality in his voice being the wrath of a Dixon.

“And ‘m not lettin’ you die here!” Where Rick’s words spoke authority, Daryl’s spoke dreadful truth – and their stubbornness clashed like dark clouds in a thunderstorm. Loud and tragic and earth-shattering. “Not like all the others-“

“I don’t plan on dying here,” Rick glared back, a definite stare locked with Daryl’s own angry narrowed eyes. “Also don’t plan on you dying here, we’re _leaving_ – tonight.”

“Yeah, how?” Daryl practically barked at him, falling into a fit of coughs that looked painful but not an inch of regret showed on the hunter’s face. “Ya gonna carry me?”

“If I have to.”

“Cut the _shit_ , Rick. I ain’t going nowhere!” Daryl was yelling as loud as Rick was by that point, only ceasing when Michonne stood up and entered the argument by hissing between her teeth.

“Will you two be quiet!” Her eyes were wide and her hand was on the hilt of the katana across her back, unsheathing the deadly weapon in an instant and watching as another booming knock rattled the door on the far side of the room. Someone – or something – was pounding against the door, in no real rhyme or reason. Hitting the door harshly, waiting for noise on the other side, before repeating the actions. Impatient and not trying to get their attention.

Something was trying to get in.

“Carl,” Rick said low and quiet, and his son cocked the shotgun in his hands roughly, already pointing at the door as Rick once again went to Daryl’s side and began to try and lift him by supporting him with his shoulder.

“Give me a gun,” Daryl told him, just as low and quiet as Rick had, and drawled so close Rick might have been the only one that heard him. His blue eyes snapped to Daryl’s in agitation. “No, don’ you do that. Give me a gun, an’ get out.” Over Rick’s dead body, he was about to say so when Daryl barreled on – Rick had never known the man to talk this much. “Jus’ – promise me ya won’ put my name on any damn walls. Think the world has had enough’a Dixons.” And Rick knew they were both thinking of Merle, of the scars on Daryl’s back, of the legacy Daryl had left in the dust a long time ago. “Bett’r off without us.”

“I won’t be,” Rick told him honestly. “Judi won’t be, or Carl, or Carol. Our family.” He swallowed hard, ignoring the knocks on the door that made it shutter in its frame – threatening to bust past the rusty hinges. “What am I suppos’ta do without you there? Can’t do this on my own, I never could.” He was leaning into Daryl’s space again, nose brushing, forehead pressed hard against Daryl’s blood stained bangs, closing his eyes because he couldn’t stand looking at the fucking dead acceptance in Daryl’s anymore.

“Let me do this,” Daryl asked quietly, so close to pleading he almost couldn’t stand it. “This ain’t how you die Rick Grimes, not on my watch.”

Rick would never agree, could never do that and live with himself, but he never got a chance to break Daryl’s heart – his trust – because it was all taken away from them. The door finally burst off the hinges, falling to the floor and kicking up dust in the sunlight that spilled through the splintered frame. And what stood there was not a human being, wasn’t even walkers, but something else entirely that had three tensing up and readying their weapons.

And had Daryl groaning because _his life_.

“Are you fuckin’ _kidding me_!?” He hollered at the animal in the door. “No! Not you again! Go the fuck away!”

It huffed irritably, heaving and jittery because it just _broke through the door_ , and seemed to recognize the redneck and his angry shouting because it fucking _sighed_ at him. But it also recognized the gun Carl was pointing at it, the sharp glint of Michonne’s sword as a weapon, and despite the looks they were giving each other because – Daryl was yelling at a damn chimp – the primate shrieked at them loudly. It was ear-splitting in the stone room, and with the door open it must have echoed outside as well because a chorus of grunts and calls from the other side of the glass replied with vigor.  Unseen but angry and if one of those animals could break through a door, the small group didn’t want to find out what a large number of them could do to the aged glass.

“Daryl!” Rich finally shouted, though it came out more as a question, because there was no way any of what was happening was making any kind of sense. “The hell is it!?” It was obviously a chimpanzee, but Rick couldn’t tell if he was asking about the chimp or why Daryl was screaming – probably a mix of both.

“Fuckin’ Rafiki here led me outta the cat house early this mornin’, and then _ditched_ my ass!” He spat the last bit at the primate, which huffed again and looked away as if it had better things to do with it’s time, though it caught sight of the something that made it freeze and puff out it’s broad chest. Shapes and shadows past the opaque glass, huffing and chittering and grunts coming from them, darker as fingers and fists began to test the glass. Checking for weaknesses, cracks, and creating a few with powerful blows that had Rick throwing Daryl’s arm across his shoulder and hauling the man to his feet in a way that was probably painful.

“Think it’ll lead us somewhere now?” Michonne asked, lowering her katana but keeping it firmly gripped as her eyes darted from the shapes behind the glass to the animal that had lowered to hands and feet and was eyeing the group impatiently.

“Don’t think we have much choice,” Carl answered, and was already heading for the exit with shotgun in hand. “Dad you got him?”

“Yeah,” Rick nodded at him, Daryl doing his best to stand up right and walk on his own without jostling the pen in his side, blood still leaking from the open wound. “You alrigh’ to go?” The hunter needed to keep his torso straight so as not to dislodge the pen or tear a larger hole in his lungs.

“M’fine jus’ move!” Daryl hissed through his teeth wetly, gritted tight and holding on to Rick far too roughly for the man to believe any words coming out of the redneck’s mouth, but urgency won out and together they managed to make a pace that had them moving quickly enough for the rest of the group. Rick took hold just as tight, forgoing wielding his own weapon entirely just so he could have his other hand splayed across Daryl’s side, fingers dug in and helping keep the man’s chest upright. They couldn’t go far like that, not out of the zoo if that’s where they were headed, so he held out hope that they were being led to something that might help the hunter survive.

It might have been crazy to hope for something like that, but Rick was no stranger to madness.

\--

The exit door led them to a back entrance for the primate house, employee access only, that was mostly high cement walls and walkways that bordered the interior of the exhibit. It wasn’t until they got past the stairs – which took quite a few minutes with Daryl nearly incapacitated, and Rick had been about 2 seconds from picking the redneck up off his feet and carrying him the rest of the way – that they reached a height that they could see over the walls and into all the exhibits.

Each outdoor area was sectioned off, with high cement walls and walkways in between, to keep the different species separate. They also had chain link for when they climbed the walls, they supposed, but inside each exhibit Rick was astonished to see most intermingled. And that there were a few that were abandoned, full of dust and dead plants and rotted corpses, but only a select few – like graveyards.

Or so he thought, until some of the corpses moved. Slow and jolted, and he realized with a cold fear that the primates in the blocked off enclosures were dead, infected just like the walkers.

It made no sense to Rick, to keep them alive like that, especially since they had a vantage point that gave whoever was there easy access to take the dead creatures out. Like shooting fish in a barrel. But this unseen person, hidden and watching them, was obviously not in their right mind to begin with – keeping walkers and these dead primates locked up in strategic places like booby traps or play things. Letting the other animals out and letting them have free reign of the city that laid not too far from the zoo, whoever it was must have been helping the animals stay alive during the harsh seasons. The herds of walkers. The infection that was spreading to something that was much stronger and more wild than a human. Rick wasn’t sure if he wanted to know the reasons at all, not when all he cared about was the man pressed to him and clinging to his frame like a drowning man in the ocean, and getting him well enough to leave this place of madness and untamed nature.

At the very back of all the exhibits was another set of houses, completely closed off to the public, and all the walkways that were set in-between the exhibits led to them. The letters were miraculously still intact on the faded wooden paneling set up outside, reading PRIMATE VETERINARY STATION. There was a  clear glass door slightly ajar up the path, overgrown with vegetation but must have been well used if there was still a visible walkway leading up to the front door, and the chimp hurried up it on all fours before shouldering inside and letting the small group follow at their own pace.

Carl hesitated at the door, peering inside with his shotgun out and raised, waiting for Rick and Daryl to make it up to where he stood, with Michonne taking up the rear and surveying the area. He looked to his dad, nodding in indication that it looked clear enough, and there were no sounds coming from inside the veterinary clinic – but then again all Rick could hear was the cicadas in the trees, and Daryl’s wet haggard breathing as he leaned heavy into his side. Rick nodded back at his son, and together they moved slow and cautiously into the building.

Inside was not what they expected.

The entrance had been changed into a living space, one entire wall bashed in allowing the outside world to mesh with the inside one, plants over growing and a few birds and inspect spotted among the miscellaneous furniture. A table covered in books and a map of the zoo with drawings all over it, instruments Rick couldn’t name and a glock that looked rusted over, with an office chair behind it. There were a few arm chairs and couches that were moth eaten, or actually chewed on in places, carpets mixing with the carpet of leaves and grass that had ventured inside, along with baskets of food that looked on the verge of spoiling. There were also notebooks _everywhere_ , and further past them behind the receptionist’s desk was what looked like an outdoor lab – beakers covered in substances that showed periodic use, and some liquids still in a few.

It was almost impressive, and it looked like something Rick had only seen in the movies – the doctor’s tent on safaris or expeditions into the wild – the one who studied and observed but knew how to integrate. Although this organic mix of science and nature looked to be on the precipice or going too far, Michonne and he shared looks and wondered the same thing. Do they dare ask if anyone is home? Do they want to know more, or was it better to scavenge and see if they could patch Daryl up themselves?

“Anyone here!?” Carl called after a few minutes, his voice echoing down the hall – only to be replied with a low bass growl that had Daryl’s whole body seizing up next to Rick. Shit.

“ _Shit_ ,” Daryl hissed, nearly tumbling out of Rick’s grasp in his effort to get back and get _away_. Pushing himself out of his reach and back hitting the wall hard. “Shit, shit, shit, ge’back!” he whispered loud and harsh and was already trying to make his way towards the door by sliding along the wall and using it for support when another voice came from the hallway.

“Leaving so soon?”

Every person froze for all of a moment, before whipping around with weapons out and raised at the dark hallway, where a figure had appeared so suddenly even Michonne hadn’t noticed the approach. Rick had gone to Daryl’s side in an instant, giving him something else to hold on to, drawing the Colt Python and also aiming it at the darkness. With slow steps that made little to no sound, a man appeared in the filtered sunlight, tall and tan with a beard that was wild and eyes that shown blankly behind his glasses. His brown hair was long and streaked with bits of grey, clothes torn but not dirty, beneath his battered lab coat that had turned off white with age. As he stopped in the sunlight Rick could see his steps were so quiet because he was barefoot.

“I just set up the exam room,” he said just as clear and carefully spoken as he had over the speakers by the atrium, no accent and no emotion. “Or did you think you’d get far with a pen sticking in your friend’s side?” That sounded too close to a threat, and Rick had had about enough of the zoo and everything crazy it held to fall into another trap.

“Who are you?”

“The only person in a thousand miles that can treat a collapsed lung,” the man answered smugly, showing no fear for Rick and his group. Which threw up all kinds of red flags in Rick’s mind, not wanting to know what the man wanted in exchange, and not wanting him to have his hands anywhere near Daryl. But if he could bandage Daryl up and help him live, the risk would be worth it in the end, he’d do anything to get the man he loved whole again.

“What do you want?” Rick asked, instead of pushing buttons like he wanted to. The man didn’t answer his fucking question, and he had been about to say that exactly when movement behind the stranger showed something large and covered in fur move fluidly to push open a doorway with it's head, the light from the room it entered showed tan fur and a rough dark mane that was near black traving over it's muscular shoulders. Feline and growling and so iconic that it made his heart stop in his chest. Rick swallowed hard and tried to not be afraid, because if the man was going to show no fear of them he should at the very least do the same.

“To help,” the man answered cryptically, and Michonne made a soft sound like a scoff that Rick hoped the other man didn’t hear.

“In exchange for what?” Rick pressed, giving Michonne a glare but also not lowering his weapon.

“Nothing,” he said with the same lack of emotion and smug lilt that flirted with arrogance. “I have all I need, all that I want, if I lack anything I lack human company. And it has been such a long time since I have spoken to another person, this interaction will do – I did not like conversing with people before, and I fear it’s only nostalgic now.” The man’s words were spoken like they weren’t his own, like he’d rather not talk at all, and Rick was more than happy to oblige except for one thing.

“Then why help us?”

The man’s stoic expression finally fell into a look that matched his madness, a smile slowly spreading until it tore at his face, paired with the blank look in his eyes made chills run up Rick’s spine. “Because I have the power to do so, just like before – when the dead ones came loose. Call me your Wizard of Oz, I am merely the man behind the curtain.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone who came along for this long, strange ride I created. I'm sorry my updates were so unfrequent, and I'm sorry a few of you thought I wasn't going to finish. I had some real life issues to work through that stalled proceedings a few times. But it's done, this is it, thank you all of you - and I hope you enjoy the ending. <3

\--

The man, who honest to God looked like Tom Hank’s stunt double for Cast Away, was named Dr. Matthew Allen Sturgis. Graduated from the University of Kansas back in 1997, after 13 years of self-medication on various grown substances that were not necessarily legal, his primary degree focuses boiled down to Human and Primate Biology, Zoology, and – oddly enough – infectious diseases. The doctor had always had this morbid fascination with organisms that were so small, invisible to the human eye without a microscope, and how they could not only survive and thrive and mutate beyond medical cures, but also violently kill a person – or an entire population depending on how strong it was. That _fascination_ made this entire nightmare that the remaining homo-sapiens had been living day by grueling day look like damn Candy Land to him, and he had been working so exclusively on the virus that had plagued the planet that he was already half-way through writing a dissertation on it.

But he was also _bat shit crazy_.

 And because of this Rick really didn’t want to let the man anywhere near Daryl with a scalpel. Or with the anesthesia that would put the hunter under enough for Dr. Sturgis could go in and repair his lungs – he had veterinary equipment that was still functional and would allow the surgery to be small and less fatal than slicing open Daryl’s ribcage. Carl almost had to hold his father back when the flippant doctor suggested they could do that instead, not even flinching when Rick almost lunged at him. He would only have to make two small incisions to fix up the lung, one for a camera (which he could still power, because the zoo still had _electricity_ that the deranged man just _never used_ ), and the other to go in and stitch up the lungs. Luckily one incision had already been made for them, it just had a plastic pen sticking out of it so Daryl could breathe. Michonne insisted on assisting, to ease both Rick and Daryl’s apprehensions, because Daryl was _not_ okay with “cracked out Christopher Lloyd” cutting into him like a steak on sizzler night. Especially with that crazy look in his eye that showed he hadn’t had the chance to cut into something living with the challenge of wanting to keep it alive in a long time.

“Lik’ HELL yer puttin’ me ta sleep!” Daryl hissed and spit at the doctor, trying to climb off the exam table despite his injuries.

“But if you scream it will draw the predators here,” Dr. Sturgis told him with glib laughter in his eyes. “Even I can’t stop them from getting to you if they smell the blood, the pain, know you’re weak and can’t run – you’re a double cheese burger just waiting to be plucked from the drive-thru window-“

“Could ya _stop_ with the analogies, please,” Rick snapped at him, making the man hold up his hands with a cease to his rant, looking like he didn’t care one way or the other what happened with Daryl. They all knew he was going under and having the surgery. And Rick didn’t want to test the doctor’s patience when Daryl’s temper tantrum started to become annoying instead of funny to the man. “Daryl, it’ll be alright, Michonne will be watching him – she knows what she’s doing.”

“Since fuckin’ when!?” Daryl spat, still struggling but no longer trying to run from the room.

“Hell if I know,” Rick said quietly, pushing on Daryl’s shoulders until he laid back down and could breathe without sounding like he was drowning in his own blood. “She might even be lying, but it’s getting her in there to keep an eye on him, you won’t be alone.” Rick’s hands hadn’t left Daryl’s form, sliding from his shoulders and down his good arm to grab at his hand and hold on tight. Daryl always used to shy away from that, when they first started the long glances that held too much heat and hope, some instinctual part of him that needed to have his hands free meshing with that Old Southern bred fear that was so damn hard to shake at the beginning. After their first big fight where Rick wouldn’t even look at Daryl for the better part of a week, what finally broke through that steel wall of tension between them was when Daryl sat next to Rick on watch and shakily took his hand in his own – not saying a word, or even really looking in Rick’s direction, just threading his fingers through Rick’s and holding on silently. It was a display of trust and love that they kept to themselves and didn’t fuss over or do often, the need to have their hands free to use weapons a more frequent necessity as of late, and it shut Daryl up and made him still for a few moments.

He watched Rick move his thumb back and forth across his own for a minute before rumbling lowly, “If he knocks m’ out, I bett’r wake up.”

“You will,” Rick told him quietly, sincerely, letting a small smile twitch at the edge of his lips that didn’t reach his eyes. “I promise you will.” Pale eyes glanced up, both knowing that Rick wasn’t going to let the man do anything irreversible to the hunter without taking a good piece out of the doctor in return. “And I’ll be right here when ya wake up.” It took a lot longer than necessary to convince Daryl to let the strange man pump him full of drugs that slowed his breathing and heart rate so much it was a little worrying – but the promise of returning home finally settled them all enough to surrender all hope to the wild man living in a zoo in the middle of nowhere.

And praying the decision wouldn’t become a regret by morning.

\--

There are three people back in the old world that did not get to say the word “Oops” without getting punched in the face, or sued within an inch of their life. That was your barber, your tattoo artist, and your surgeon.

In the new world they got shot between the eyes.

“THE FUCK YOU MEAN ‘ _OOPS_ ’!?” Rick had his Colt out and hammer pulled back before he finished screaming the words out, six inch barrel pressed against the forehead of the damn doctor who _gave Daryl too much anesthesia_. The hunter was still passed the fuck out on the exam table, professionally stitched back up and breathing a whole hell of a lot easier – which was damn music to Rick’s ears, the even and slow breaths that weren’t ragged and wet and painful. It was the only reason Dr. Sturgis was still breathing. 

“My assistant always put the animals under,” Dr. Sturgis said without even flinching at the gun literally in his face, or Rick’s near uncontrollable rage, in fact he almost looked like he was trying not to laugh. “And I might be a little rusty on human dosage.”

“I’m going to count to five and then pull this trigger,” Rick told him just as flippantly. “So you best start makin’ sense and tell me _when he will wake up_.”

“I’m not sure,” Sturgis said with a little shake of his head and a tilt of a smile that made Rick want to punch him in the teeth. “Morning, probably. You are more than welcome to stay the night, it is safest here.”

“We’re not staying,” Rick said.

“You can’t move him,” Sturgis smirked. “He needs to recover. The stitches could break, his lung could collapse again, you really shouldn’t leave for a few days,” Rick pulled the hammer back the last click that readied the revolver for a quick and quiet shot with no kick-back, the sound only seeming to make the doctor smirk more, “ _but_ morning will work just as well. It will at least give him some time for the skin to start reconnecting.” Rick didn’t remove his gun or release the hammer back to its rest mode for another good long minute where he gave his most level and dangerous stare into the other man’s dead eyes.

Maybe he really was as crazy as he looked.

“May I check on my patient now?” Rick really didn’t want to, but he eventually stepped away and let the doctor check over Daryl’s vital signs and breathing, watching every touch and move the other man made like a hawk. Once Dr. Sturgis was satisfied with whatever he found, he looked back up at Rick and made an amused sound that didn’t match the look on his face. “Why are you so afraid? I am offering the safest sanctuary you will find, no matter where you go.”

“I doubt that,” Rick said lowly. “And I’m not afraid of you.”

“Obviously,” the other man said shortly. “You try to appear as if you fear nothing, but fear is what steadies your hand. Drives you forward, and draws you back – fear _controls_ you. When is the last time you made a choice that didn’t stem from fear?” Rick blinked at the man, stunned for a moment at his strange moment of clarity when all he had been spouting since he’d walked down the dark hallway hours before was cryptic phrases and insane notions. Rick didn’t want to play his mind games, the question sounded more like a trick, he knew fear drove his actions – fear was not something to shy away from, it is what could keep you alive if it didn’t drive you mad. The last thing he’d done that had nothing to do with fear was –

Clear blue eyes drifted to where Daryl was still quietly breathing, in deep medicated sleep and so relaxed into the exam table it physically conveyed how bone-tired he was. Beaten, bruised, scraped up and stitched like a patchwork quilt – he’d been through hell and back just to get back home, back to Rick. Daryl knew fear all too well, housed an intimate relationship with it that had been with him since he was small, but the choices he made didn’t stem from it like Rick’s did – not anymore. It had been a long time since Daryl had showed that he was afraid of anything, and even then it was only light traces of apprehension and unease back when they first got close enough to touch. Rick had been afraid of a lot of things back then. And really, it should have been apparent _sooner_ that the only time Rick had never been afraid was in the moments when he was with Daryl. Learning Daryl, trusting Daryl, getting to know him back on the farm, relying on him during the long winter when Lori was pregnant, their friendship at the prison and everything after.

The last thing Rick had decided to do – that had absolutely nothing to do with the fear that had laced every aspect of their lives – was pull Daryl by the hand into their tent, when they set up camp outside Kentucky at an old truck stop months ago, and had him sleep next to him and their children for the first time. Something that had been long overdue, and Rick honestly hadn’t known why it hadn’t happened sooner. As much as he secluded himself, Daryl didn’t deserve to be left by the wayside and forgotten, and Rick had begun to notice how often that happened over the years they’d known each other. It was something he fixed as soon as it occurred to him, and he hadn’t let go since.

“You do not fear the wildness in him,” Sturgis interrupted his thoughts. “You have tamed it, whatever it was, and now it is the one thing you do not fear – even if you should.”

“Daryl isn’t dangerous,” Rick almost snapped. “I trust him with everything, our children, our home –“

“But he is,” Sturgis insisted with a smile.

“You don’t even know him!”

“I know a wild animal when I see one, I have been around them for the past 20 years, but that does not mean that they are not reliable. They are the best protection a man could ask for, the trust of a beast, fierce and loyal. It is the most true and unpredictable thing, but it will not break unwarranted. They will fight until they die.”

Rick swallowed hard, once again not able to help how he kept glancing at Daryl, but when his gaze flicked back up to glare at Sturgis once more he was surprised by the intensity and manic anger that lay behind his thick-rimmed glasses. The first emotion to surface that wasn’t sociopathic amusement.

“Do _not_ abuse it,” he instructed firmly, and it sounded so much like a threat that Rick’s hand hovered over the Colt Python once more. The man was deranged, the solitary confinement among the chaos of an unknown wilderness driving him a new breed of insane, but that didn’t mean he was wrong. And for that Rick didn’t draw his weapon again, and paused as he considered all the man had said.

“I won’t,” Rick promised, and that seemed to appease the man back into his state of bemused observation.

“You can stay here, I would allow it,” Sturgis said as he turned away and began to pull out fresh bandages to rewrap Daryl’s wounds and incisions. “It is safe here, free of the dead except for the ones I keep, and the animals will be better protection than any wall you could ever build.” From across the exam table, the light from the lamps casting long shadows over every object, Rick felt the foreboding sense of being balanced on the edge of a knife – the man had been lucid enough the past hour, but there were strange ticks and strained moments where he seemed less than sane. Like he could snap – grow bored or decide they weren’t worth the trouble, as evidence had shown a few times when Daryl was being too hostile about the surgery. But in the end he did save Daryl’s life, and for that Rick proceeded with absolute caution. It would be best to let the doctor down gently, he figured.

They couldn’t stay any longer than what was necessary, Rick didn’t want to test the man’s hospitality.

“Not for my kids,” Rick answered as neutrally as he could, instead of the ‘hell no’ that he wanted to scream from the damn roof. “Or my family.”

The silence stretched as Dr. Sturgis slowly unraveled more gauze, and with a quick emotionless glance from beneath his glasses he replied, “Well you better keep heading West, then.” Not even batting an eye, or bringing it up again, that bored and unsympathetic look returning to his features.

And that honestly scared Rick more than anything else had since they entered the park.

\--

The next morning Daryl woke with the sun.

He always did, but this time it was to Rick sitting beside him - wide awake and watching the dawn paint across the sky vibrantly. Not a moment later, when Rick finally noticed the other’s pale blue eyes trained on him, were they collectively getting Daryl into an upright position and back into his blood-stained clothes. Daryl was ready to bolt out the door, stiff and vision still bleary around the edges from the drugs, but Rick caught him and held him still long enough for the hunter to snap a questioning glance silently – annoyed and hurting and wanting to put as much distance between them and the zoo as quickly as possible.

Rick was inclined to agree, but not before leaning in and kissing Daryl softer than he’d ever kissed the other man before. It stopped the hunter in his tracks, stunned and searching for a reason, not sure to take the carefulness as an insult or as something more. Something that he didn’t quite understand, and was worried he never would. But Rick just smiled a small smile at his stunned expression, and then pulled him out the door until they were silently entering the living room and shaking Michonne and Carl awake.

They were almost out the door, weapons loaded and ready to make their way across the zoo, when Rick saw he had Daryl’s hunting knife once more with his own things, the archer wouldn’t be able to use it effectively on the way out of the park. Staring at it, Rick contemplated the weapon before setting it down on the research table right inside the front door – he had no intention of waking the doctor to say thank you before they left. He had no intention of ever stepping foot into the state of Missouri ever again, if he could help it, and the eleven inch knife would be a good parting gift in Rick’s opinion. Weapons were more prized among their group than food or clothing or cars, and if the doctor’s opinion differed then so be it. At least he would recognize that they left on good terms, and wouldn’t send his pets out after them as they tried to leave the park.

They were out the door before the sun had full risen into the sky.

And without uttering a single word.

\--

The small group was slow moving, with Daryl’s injuries making him move stiffly, but by mid-morning they had reached the black iron gates and the vice in Daryl’s chest loosened to the point he felt like he could finally breathe. Every twist and turn as they left the park had been nerve-wracking, the sounds of heavy breathing and growls and rustling leaves all imaginary he was sure, but that didn’t settle the agitated set to his teeth that had him clenching his jaw and pushing himself faster until his stitches pulled too harshly at his skin. He began to walk so fast, stilted and adrenaline numbing out the pain, that he got ahead of the others and reached his bike still parked just in front of the gates before any of them. Pushing it forward and using it more as leverage to keep moving, though Carl showed up and took it from him as they started uphill towards the jeep.

Not one of them looked back until they reached the car.

The zoo looked so quiet in the morning light, the day bright and promising, masking the horrors that lay within. Daryl wasn’t even in the car, yanking the door open and about to climb inside, when movement past the gates caught his eye. Among the tufts of tall grass, similar to the ones that filled the fields between the trees out along the highway, tan fur and a jet black mane could be spotted moving through the thick tangle of drying blades – causing Daryl to freeze for all of two seconds, registering what it was, before climbing in and shutting the door too harshly. Not bothering to say a word to Rick or the other two as they sped away from the park nestled deep within the Western hills of Missouri.

The Kansas City Zoo was a place that didn’t belong to the dead, or the living, but to something else entirely – a wilderness that was steeped in chaos and madness as it changed and morphed with the seasons and years that passed. A blend of the structured captivity that crumbled under the elements and was over-grown with nature, making it become something new and unprecedented. There was no way of knowing how long it would last tucked into 15 square miles of sanctioned off property that belonged to no one now that the world ended, but it had a better chance of outliving them all.

And Daryl Dixon didn’t give two shits if it burned to the ground the next day, or stayed standing tall until it became the new capitol of the world. He just wanted to be home, and never lay eyes on those curved iron gates ever again.

The caravan was ready when they got to the Starlight amphitheater, and the only reason Rick hopped out of the jeep was to go check in with Carol and Glenn - to ask about Aaron, the group and if they had encountered anything else while they were away - pointing at Daryl to stay where he was because they were _not_ staying longer than they had to. The Dixon didn’t even have time to get mad, huffing and slumping in his seat obediently for all of two seconds, before the door flew open beside him and he had a three year old girl climbing into his lap and hugging around his neck so tight it was hard to breathe. But that might also have been because she started crying, and Daryl could never stand to see his little girl cry.

“’m alright sweetheart,” he rumbled quietly, holding her close to his chest with his good arm and hugging tight enough the relief at holding her again wasn’t so over-whelming. “’m alright.” He tried to shush her, toughed it out through the babbling sobs that didn’t make much sense though it was made clear he was in trouble for leaving like that and not coming back, but the small girl had quieted to sniffling and burying her face in his neck when Rick finally returned to the jeep. He gave Daryl a look of pity and thinly veiled sadness of his own, running a hand through Judi’s curls as the sounds of cars starting up chorused from the line forming behind them. He and Daryl shared a look, the same they always did before the beginning of something new, something dangerous, a run or a trip or something stupid that might get them killed. Or something that might save their life, something that would finally give them four walls, the chance to call a place home. It was a silent question asking _‘are you ready for this?’_ , conveyed with no words, and the somehow just as quiet _‘always’_ in reply.

They would never again take the route through the Mid-Western states for as long as they lived, the memories of what happened on the Kansas-Missouri border something that would stick with them for years to come. Nights for months following the horrific incident where Daryl would sit straight up from a nightmare, breathing heavy and still hearing the deafening screams and growls of the tiger in his ears as it bared down on him, the echoes of his ribs breaking one after the other in his chest. The first few weeks were the worst. Rick holding him tight afterwards, talking low and quiet and reminding him how many miles they had put between them since they’d left, until the hunter’s heart stopped hammering in his chest.

But with every group they passed along the way to the Rocky Mountains, every person they encountered that were heading in that direction back towards the East coast, Rick would always warn them about the zoo. About what lay there surrounding the sprawling metropolis of Kansas City. For the ones who refused to listen, Daryl would scoff – tell them it was their own damn funeral then. Warn them to stay indoors at night with the doors locked, that if they heard something that sounded like laughter to hide, to keep an eye out for lions in the tall grass.

And for tigers in the woods.


End file.
